Tag: Southwords

Southwords

Queen of Bath

It’s a bit of a stretch, sure. But this dream tub sorta works

By Ashley Walshe

If you’re a bath person like me — that is to say, someone who soaks ritualistically — then perhaps you’ve spent time imagining what life could be like if your tub was just a little wider; a little deeper; a little more picturesque.

An elegant garden tub aglow with flickering candles. A cast iron clawfoot laced with salt and rose petals. An hourglass drop-in complete with whirlpool jets.

Such visions used to rule my mind.

Now, having spent the last two years living in a 32-foot travel trailer with my husband and my canine shadow, my dream tub has but one requirement: I can bathe in it.

Which brings me to my current situation.

A standard bathtub holds about 70 gallons of water. Suffice it to say that our RV tub does not. Think farmhouse sink with bobsleigh undertones. Bigger than a breadbox, smaller than a storage tote.

I’ll be honest. It took a while to see potential here. The tub’s fun-size dimensions combined with our 6-gallon hot water heater don’t exactly add up to a space for quiet contemplation and long, soulful soaks. Quick showers are fine. But when baths are your primary indulgence, you consider all your options.

My first bath attempt was, frankly, valiant. I’m no bobsled pilot, but given my daily yoga practice, I was deftly able to navigate the tub’s shallow waters. A knees-to-chest pose, for instance, followed by seated pigeon, a gentle variation of boat pose and — after a bit of ocean breathing — a legs-up-the-wall inversion.

Despite this series of postures, most of my body was not, in fact, wet. Still, half baths are better than no bath in my book. I lit a candle and resumed my lazy pigeon.

All of this was fine. Really. But when the ankle-deep water began cooling with unholy swiftness, my efforts seemed altogether fruitless.

“I wish we had more hot water,” I mumbled as the basin drained.

“We can try using the electric kettle next time,” my husband offered from the living space. “I’ll even be your bath butler.”

I felt my lips explore the foreign words.

“Bath butler.” I liked the sound of it.

My bath butler has changed my life. Weekly, per my request or his proposal, I luxuriate in what I’ve taken to calling my Queen’s Bath — a modified version of a full bath, sure, but a yogi can dream.

Pre-kettle, I add a swirl of Epsom salt into the finger-pour of steaming water, get the candle going, flip off the lights and climb in.

If I fits, they say, I sits.

By now, my bath butler has mastered water control. He knows that, after adding a kettle to my bath, it’s time to heat up the next one. Sensitive and compassionate, he keeps things strictly professional, a trait any honorable bath butler should possess.

“How’s the temperature?” he might ask. Or, “May I bring you a beverage?” Most often, he simply pours and gives a courtly head bow. Role playing at its finest.

Four kettles in, the water nearly hugs my waist. By kettle five, I’m beginning to feel like a Greek goddess. Kettle six? I could not ask for more.

You don’t opt for camper life without sacrificing some modern comforts. Still, we have everything we need: clean, running water; electricity; full bellies and warm hearts.

My butler is the bath bomb on top.

If it’s true that gratitude is the quickest path to happiness, I think I’m already there. As for my husband?

“I’m happy to bring you water,” he assures me. Although he insists on maintaining his professional butler pose, I pry.

“What’s in it for you?” I ask.

He pours the kettle, shrugs, then clears his throat. “I guess I like the view.” PS

Ashley Walshe is a former editor of O.Henry and a longtime contributor to PineStraw. She presently lives and bathes near the glittering waters of Lake James.

Southwords

AI, AI, Oh

Be afraid, be very afraid

By Jim Moriarty

Among the litany of things we have every right to fear in 2024, one that seems to be near the top of everyone’s list is AI. Being a person who believes that existential threats ought to be taken seriously, I’ve searched in vain for someone who can explain to me — admittedly a person of limited scope and ability — why a machine that is already way smarter than I am is going to be a clear and present danger to the human race because it’s going to be way, way, way smarter than I am. And this just when I thought artificial intelligence had arrived in the nick of time.

My pint mate, Tom, and I are gentlemen of a certain age, and when we drone on and on about this and that like Statler and Waldorf in a quiet corner of our pub, The Bitter and Twisted, names, dates, the exact sequence of events and whether or not these things actually happened at all, can be somewhat elusive. We typically award points for being able to retrieve names — first and last elevates you to the bonus situation — but more often than not our response to one another is simply, “How soon do you need to know?”

Just as our minds are failing and our short-term memories have pulled a hamstring, along comes AI to pick up the slack. We’re both longtime marrieds, so the experience of existing in an environment controlled by something infinitely smarter than we are is not something with which we are entirely unfamiliar. I will confess that during a recent unpleasant bout of sobriety, I discovered, much to my surprise, that my wife, the War Department, seems to repeat herself with disturbing frequency. Under ordinary circumstances, I never would have come to this conclusion, since my having heard this thing — whatever it might be — in the first place would have been a matter of dispute. But I digress.

Tom and I both have backgrounds in golf, where AI has existed for something in the neighborhood of 600 of years. I speak, of course, of a player and his caddie. If ever there was a template for artificial intelligence, this would be it. Factoring in all variables — distance, wind, lie — and possible outcomes, if I was to ask my caddie if I could get home with a good 4-iron, the computing power accumulated across the centuries would spit out the answer “eventually.” I’ve been given to understand that if your personal chatbot doesn’t know an answer it may exhibit “a tendency to invent facts in moments of uncertainty.” Peas in pod, if you ask me.

In order to dangle my toes in the AI universe, after downloading the program onto my laptop, I asked my newfound chatbot (who I have named Jeeves) to write me a joke about AI. This was the response:

“Why did the AI break up with its computer?”

“Because it found someone byte-ter.”

I confess, I was impressed. AI has been data mining Henny Youngman. (For the cost of a pint of Smithwick’s Tom will be happy to explain who he was.) And so I pressed on. I say, Jeeves, write me a limerick. I don’t mind telling you, the results were disappointing. Bland doggerel. Perhaps I hadn’t phrased my request with sufficient specificity. And so I asked my chatbuddy to write me a humorous yet salacious limerick. The response I got was:

“I’m sorry I can’t assist you with that request.”

AI apparently has higher standards than I have, which I suppose is the whole point, though I find it peculiar Jeeves has never heard of Nantucket. PS

2024 Department Southwords

Southwords

The Third Wheel

Keeping up with the big kids

By Emilee Phillips

“Don’t cry! Don’t cry! Shhhhhhhh,” my siblings would plead while glancing over their shoulders for a looming parent. This was the phrase commonly panic-whispered in our household after one of their “brilliant” ideas.

“Hey, kid,” my older sister would say, “have you ever tried riding a laundry basket down the stairs?” The house we grew up in had sturdy wooden walls, impervious to laundry baskets. This was good for the walls. Not so good for me.

Siblings are handy for all sorts of things, like teaching you words you didn’t know and weren’t supposed to use, or how to ride a bike — a learning experience that could combine both injury and vocabulary.

I have two siblings, a brother and a sister. They are 10 and 11 years older than me, respectively, which made playtime a bit challenging. I was the laboratory rat used to test their theories, such as: How long was it possible to play hide-and-seek before realizing they weren’t seeking me at all? Or how long could they tickle me before I screamed? I don’t know what this training was for, but at least I developed strong lungs.

Like all who share blood, we messed with each other often. The games frequently involved seeing which two siblings wanted to team up against the other one on any given day, for no particular reason. Who got the last Life Saver would spur an entire wrestling match in the living room. Perks of being so much younger and smaller than them included being able to wriggle into small spaces where they couldn’t reach me. Cons were that all they had to do was sit on me and I was conquered. On the weekends, my cardio was running through the house between my sister’s group of friends and my brother’s group of friends, acting as carrier pigeon for the top-secret messages.

After they went to college, I had to entertain myself. I played dress-up with all the things they left behind until summer break. Making Halloween costumes out of my sister’s dance recital outfits was better than any Spirit Halloween store. My brother’s room was where I went for props.

Christmastime was magical because it meant we were all together. They would make me hot chocolate, snuggle up with me and tell me tales of Santa. “Listen closely and maybe we’ll hear sleighbells,” my sister would say on Christmas Eve. What I didn’t know was that, more than once, my brother climbed up on the roof, bells in hand, just to keep that magic alive. I was in denial about Santa quite a bit longer than my peers because of it.

You must be thinking, “Ah, that’s so sweet!” And it was, but it balances out with the year my sister made me wrap my own Christmas present. She even told me I had to act surprised in front of Mom. I suppose we can chalk that one up to acting lessons.

It could be lonely at times, growing up with siblings who were so much older, but it also gave me a built-in advice panel, tutors (for real subjects), great taste in movies and a sense of adventure from trying to keep up with them. That last bit only added to my mother’s gray hairs.

I’ll admit, it’s hard feeling so far behind them in so many ways. Sometimes it’s like I’m in a race where I can never catch up. Forever the annoying little sister, I’m always looking for ways to be “part of the club.”

We don’t see each other very often anymore, though we have a group text for important things like proving each other wrong, arranging the next gathering, or determining who has the honor of getting Mom socks for Christmas — a happy family tradition.

To my mother’s dismay, my sister and I still occasionally throw ourselves down the stairs aboard various objects. We most recently upgraded to mattress surfing. The walls of her current house don’t hold up quite as well as those of our childhood home. Or perhaps the payload is a bit bigger.

The good news is, these days if tears are shed, it’s because we’re crying with laughter, though we probably still don’t want our parents to know. PS

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

2023 Department 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.

2023 Department Southwords

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