Southwords

Brrrrrrrrrr!

Freezing? Get used to it.

By Kate Smith

“Did you lose a bet?”

It was a little old lady out walking her dog. I’m in my bikini, wringing water out of my hair on the edge of a Whispering Pines lake. High on endorphins, I just laugh. “It’s good for me,” I say.

I’m not naturally hot-blooded. I don’t have the selkie genes — named for the seal folk of Norse mythology — we hear about in people who survive hours in glacial water. And I don’t have a high concentration of that metabolic unicorn, brown adipose tissue. In fact, I have a 97-degree average body temperature, am borderline anemic, and I hate the cold. But I’m trying to change that.

It started back in September. On gut instinct, I bought a used 9-foot longboard and taught myself how to surf. It was meditative medicine and nothing has kept me out of the water since. I don’t mind the rashes, skinned legs from wipeouts in broken seashells, sinuses raw with salt water, or bruises on my ribs. I’m not afraid of sharks, even after seeing one a few feet away on my second day in the water, and I’m not fazed by jellyfish stings or colliding with fishing lines. But as soon as winter hit, the cold has given me a run for my money.

I have Raynaud’s, an autoimmune condition that constricts the tiny blood vessels to my fingers and toes, making them go white and numb from cold exposure as insignificant as the produce aisle in the grocery store. Despite a full wetsuit with hood, gloves and boots, they still go numb, and it doesn’t take long before my dexterity nosedives, and then so do I. A lot.

Add to that the darkness of winter, and despite my best intentions, I’ve found myself huddled in my house for entire weekends, fatigued by the gloom and too cold to surf, the thing that helps the most. I hate the cold. But, really, I’m trying to change that.

I heard about this guy named Wim Hof. He climbed Mount Kilimanjaro in shorts and ran a half marathon above the Arctic Circle barefoot. I figured if this normal dude can train his body to thrive in the Arctic, I can certainly figure it out here in the South for the sake of getting back on my surfboard.

According to Wim, the process of cold adaptation is pretty simple. Do it, safely, until it doesn’t suck so much. The first time I waded into a cold lake, the water felt like razor blades. I dipped under, and came up with my heart pounding, muscles aching, and a little dizzy and disorientated. But when I got back to shore, the blood surged through my body, warming me completely, and brought with it a drug-like euphoria. So, I did it again. And every day since, it’s gotten easier. It’s still cold, but it’s not as painful, and it doesn’t take my breath away. In fact, it makes me feel almost invincible.

Turns out, that’s a normal reaction for cold-water swimmers. It’s evidence of something called cross adaptation. When your body adapts to the physical stressor of cold (or heat, or big changes in oxygen or pressure), you become more capable, physically and psychologically, to handle stressors outside your control. What doesn’t kill you really does make you stronger, and it might even bliss you out. Along with strengthening your immune system, cardiovascular system and metabolism, cold water adaptation floods your body with stress-relieving hormones. When you emerge from ice-cold water, your brain thinks you almost died, and it’s rewarding you for staying alive by making you feel positively giddy.

Swimming in cold lake water did indeed help my body rise to the physical challenge of winter surfing. Soon, I was back at it, albeit sporting one of the warmest wetsuits on the market. But cold water helped me rise to the challenge of my internal winter, too. Every time I surface from beneath and I see spring a little closer ahead, I get a shot of courage and hope.

If Mother Nature can’t stop me, nothing can.  PS

Kate Smith is the clinical herbalist and holistic health coach of Made Whole Herbs.

Southwords

O Christmas Tree

Poor, rusted Christmas tree

By Ruth Moose

When water is up to your waist, the last thing you think about is Christmas. And certainly not Christmas trees. You rescue what you can at hand. You bless sump pumps and those who make them. Same goes for wet vacuums. You are amazed that sofas can swim, but armchairs cannot. And you cry over books. Thousands of pages, sodden wads of pages, glued together, their backs forever warped and bucked in humps and waves. How heavy they are as you cart them to the curb. How wasted their lives.

Hurricane Florence got all the publicity, but the hurricane after got us. In Albemarle, our usually sunny (and the site of my artist husband’s studio) daylight basement ended up with nearly 3 feet of water. At least it was clear, cold and clean water, but still a frightening sight. Here were my husband’s sketches and paintings, art books, art supplies and frames. His working easels and drawing board, paints and brushes. It’s a sickening feeling to pull open a drawer of paint tubes and water pours out. Not to mention a lifetime collection of art books with glorious color reproductions of paintings he’d used for study and inspiration. In other sections of the basement he also had a woodworking shop furnished with years of accumulated equipment and tools.

Then there was the household part of the basement with the water heater, furnace and 35-year-old food freezer, all standing in water. Plus various assorted items we’d stored over the years. Never had water, four sump pumps going simultaneously, receded so slowly. You can only haul furniture out to dry, watch the skies and wait. Pray. And when the water is gone, you wet vac and wet vac and wet vac. You hear the roar of the motor in your sleep.

Then you begin to dry out sketches and wipe off oil paintings and cry over lost watercolors who went to meet their medium. You open cabinet doors, and drawers and water pours out.

Somewhere in the flood I heard my librarian aunt’s voice when she said, more than once, she never trusted basements. Neither did she like attics. “Basements are too wet,” she said, “and attics are too dry.” At least I thought what we had stored in the attic was dry and better dry any day than wet, wet and wetter.

But, miracle of miracles, after the water went, the air conditioner came back on, the water heater began to purr and the ancient food freezer hummed its heart out. So I emptied and cleaned it and began all over again. Thirty-five years old, hauled through four complete household moves, the freezer kept going and going and going. Gave one heart and hope.

In all that water and wetness, nobody thought about the Christmas tree until months later. We were too busy mopping and drying out and saving what could be saved. When it came time to do the tree, we remember what had been in some of those sodden boxes in the basement. That artificial tree I’d argued and fought against and finally been persuaded (for ecological reasons) to tolerate. Not accept. All our married life my husband and I had fought the real vs. artificial Christmas tree fight. And for years I’d won. Real was a cedar tree that permeated the whole house with the smell of Christmas. No artificial tree had ever come close to that. For years we’d had the advantage of family land to tromp as a family, choose and cut a tree. We never found the perfect tree. Just ones that could be trimmed or branches spliced to suffice. It didn’t matter, as long as they were real. All Christmas trees when trimmed and lighted are beautiful.

When family lands were no longer available, I had no choice but an artificial tree. Somehow the picture of my husband assembling those branches that still look and feel — to me — like giant green bottle brushes, never matched the one in my memory of tramping through the woods on a winter Sunday, kids and dog ahead, ax and saw in hand, to bring home bundled and tied atop the station wagon, this year’s Christmas tree.

Thankfully, the tree ornaments and decorations were in the attic. The tree itself had been stored in boxes too big to go through the crawl space and had to go to the basement. The basement flooded. So we had dry ornaments and a rusty tree. We dried out the branches, shook the rust out, stuck them back into a shape that still looked like a pyramid of green bottle brushes and said, “Merry Christmas to all and to all a working sump pump.”  PS

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

Southwords

On a Wig and a Prayer

By Jim Moriarty

When the occasion warrants, I’ve been known to dress in women’s clothes. I’m not going to blame genetics entirely for this but it’s an established fact that my eldest brother — the one with the Ivy League law degree who clerked on the United States Supreme Court — once performed a musical number in drag at a 137-year-old Boston club that, on a separate occasion, had entertained Winston Churchill at dinner. My brother did allow as how the entire affair was a bit embarrassing, though given his singing voice, I’m not sure which part would have been the most mortifying.

While my local club, the Bitter and Twisted, never, to the best of my knowledge, hosted a British prime minister, I have appeared behind the bar there in female costume. It may have happened more than once. One particular evening it was for a holiday fundraiser. My wife, the War Department, and I joined Doris and Neville Beamer to pour beer and mix drinks dressed as The Mamas and the Papas. I was Mama Cass.

Costuming wasn’t a significant issue. As luck would have it, Mary McKeithen at Showboat has all my measurements — though for this episode I confess broad admiration at her ability to conjure up a pair of size 10 1/2 white go-go boots, a feat she accomplished with the apparent ease of ordering a pepperoni pizza.

The evening coincided with a visit from our nephew. At the time he was a C-130 pilot on active duty in the California Air Force Reserve, and he and his crew had put in at Pope Air Force Base on their way to who knows where. We invited them to join the festivities, which they did.

When our two-hour cruise behind the bar had ended, we collectively decided to retire to Neville’s basement emporium to unwind from the demands of performance art. Unaccustomed as I was to the rigors of wearing white go-go boots, I couldn’t tolerate the pain any longer and had to make a stop at home to de-Cass before joining the rest of our jolly band. I showed up at Neville’s in my usual costume — jeans, tennis shoes, a golf shirt and a jacket. As time went by and the feeling returned to my feet, my wife was approached by one of our nephew’s crewmen.

“So, what happened to Uncle Jim?” he inquired, clearly crestfallen at the mysterious absence of Mama Cass.

She nonchalantly pointed at me several barstools away. “He’s right there,” she said. And had been for the better part of an hour.

The appearance, or disappearance, of Mama Cass wasn’t my last brush with blush. That occurred some years later when I was on tap to reprise our bartending masquerade, this time dressed as a traditional geisha.

The War Department had volunteered to apply my makeup for me. After painting my face with the appropriate white greasepaint, she began drawing on the bright red lipstick with the care and concentration of a high school biology student slicing open a frog. When she finished she stood back to admire her handiwork.

“Oh, my God,” she said, her eyes widening with fright.

“What?” I asked. What had she done? Was I fixed up to look like the Joker?

“You look exactly like your mother.”

That was enough to make me hang up my muumuus for good.  PS

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

 

Southwords

How We Wallpapered Fool’s Hill

Hint: One roll at a time

By Ruth Moose

What felt like a midlife crisis to my husband and myself, our friends and family called “going over Fool’s Hill.” They shook their heads as we sold our life in Charlotte to go live in the wild woods of the Uwharrie Mountains. And they were wild woods.

We bought three acres of the 900-acre Stony Mountain, an area known locally for its rocks and rattlesnakes. There was one other house a mile away that overlooked the Uwharrie River and Morrow Mountain. Our lot was graced by a mammoth beech tree and a tiny tumbling creek.

We planned to use the money from our city house to build a smaller home in our wild country, doing much of the work ourselves. Our sons, 11 and 16, agreed with friends and family: We’d lost our minds. Nonetheless, they rolled up their sleeves and pitched in.

My husband drew our house plans. As a DO (diversified occupations) student in high school, he took a drafting class that likely influenced his decision to pursue a degree in art rather than becoming a pharmacist.

We began by clearing, cutting, hauling and burning brush. Then we hired someone to cut only enough trees to allow a road, driveway and space for a house.   

We hired a contractor to frame the house, then we took over, opting to install paneling over dry wall so we wouldn’t end up having to spackle, sand and paint it. Paneling was a breeze: once it was up, you were done with it.

My husband liked paneling. And he liked wallpaper for the same reason. Once it was up, you were done.   

I not only like wallpaper. I love it.

I love everything about it: the patterns, the instant effect, the burst of color. And I had always said that if I ever built a house of my own, I’d wallpaper the closets.

It helped that I found a place where you could buy returned rolls of wallpaper for just one dollar a pop. Did you know that a standard closet requires just two rolls? One son’s closet got a western pattern, brown calico for the other. My husband’s closet was decked in faux denim while my walk-in was covered in blue birds and apple blossoms. Again, friends and family shook their heads. Fools.

We were doing great, the house was taking shape, then our money ran out. We needed a loan to finish. I went to a mortgage broker. OK, I went to four of them. One should have requested a loan before one began, I was told repeatedly. Not in the middle of building. Clearly it was a no deal.

Finally, a friend at church suggested that a small local bank might be able to help.

So I rolled up my husband’s drawings, made an appointment, dressed my best — heels and everything — and crossed my fingers.

The banker asked to see our blueprints. When I unrolled my husband’s drawings, he looked totally puzzled. “Who did these?” He asked.

“My husband,” I said.   

“OK,” the banker said, rolling them up before handing them back. He crossed his arms, leaned toward the wall in his chair. “Tell me about your house.”

I explained that the house was planned for low maintenance. It would have some solar features, triple paned windows — and we were wallpapering the closets.

He laughed, doodling figures on his desk pad.

“How much do you need?”

I said, “But you haven’t checked our credit.”

“I don’t need to,” he said.  “Anybody who wallpapers closets is a good credit risk.”

We got the loan, finished the house and lived there 17 years.  PS

After living in Stony Mountain, the Mooses moved to Fearrington Village when Ruth joined the creative writing faculty at UNC-Chapel Hill. Her husband, Talmadge, died in 2003. After Ruth retired from teaching, she shocked all who know her by moving back to Albemarle.

Southwords

What’s in a Name?

Sometimes it’s everything

By Kate Smith

My first nickname was Catfish. Dad pronounced it at my birth because I arrived “slippery and wide-eyed as one.”

When I was old enough to comprehend the likeness between me and the bottom-feeder I was not amused, and tried renaming myself. Buck was my first choice, after the wolf pack leader of Jack London’s Call of the Wild. It’s how I signed my name on presents and on a stocking one Christmas. Typical Leo. When that didn’t stick, I tried imitating my best friend’s nickname, Bobcat Brandi, with the closest wild feline alliteration, Cougar Kate. I didn’t understand why the adults thought this was hilarious.

And that gallant trail name I imagined I’d be given when I hiked the Appalachian Trail? Last fall, during a short 20-mile stretch, I was declared Peein’-on-the-trail-Kate. In hindsight, Catfish wasn’t so bad. Good thing, too, because it’s what Dad still calls me.

Dad picked up catfishing in his 20s when he moved to North Carolina to work at Cameron Boys Camp. Still, 35 years later, on summer weekends, he leaves home in the late afternoon with a camp chair, pole and box of chicken guts to meet a friend with a boat, and fish all night. When I told my Georgia crew leader about this while we built a trail together in Alaska, his eyes got big: “Awe, man, your Dad goes noodlin’?”

While Dad uses bait on a line rather than bare hands and a forearm thickened by scars from catfish teeth, I still think it’s pretty cool. Catfishing means Dad is out on the moonlit water when the fish bite best. He’ll come home at 5 a.m. with 80 pounds of wild game and solicit us five kids, most of us out of the house, back to the family kitchen. Although growing up we bought most of our food from the grocery store and Dad worked a normal day job, it’s these times that define him most to me. Awake in the middle of the quiet night, providing.

I grew up thinking that good dads are always awake: chasing away nightmares, driving the family halfway across the country for Christmas at Pop’s house, watching the fire smolder out safely during camping trips, up every hour to check the temperature of meat in the smoker the night before summer barbecues. Even now, if I have car trouble when driving late at night, I call Dad, and he always answers.

I’ve inherited a lot of traits from Dad. I’ve got his eyes, his tawny skin tone, his all-or-nothing impulses. We both headbang to AC/DC and cry during praise and worship at church. And somewhere in there, I’ve got Dad’s love of the night. Something about the quiet and stillness prompts my deepest thinking, feeling, and creating. There’s a thrill and a sacredness about it, when no one else is awake except the 18-wheelers, people on their way to the airport, the crickets and cicadas and bullfrogs, and always, when I need him, my dad.

August is my birthday month. Mom buys a card with an inspiring quote, and Dad signs it. I guarantee he’ll address his note to Catfish. And when I call to say I’m coming over, he’ll ask me what I want for my birthday lunch. At dawn the next morning, he’ll pull in the driveway from a night on the lake, ready to celebrate with a cooler full. PS

Kate Smith is the herbalist and holistic health coach of Made Whole Herbs in Southern Pines.

Her favorite book is whatever she is reading, though it’s doubtful any would top The Lord of the Rings.

Southwords

The Show Must Go On

Lessons from the Barnum of baseball

By Jim Moriarty

I only have one story about fireworks that doesn’t reflect great discredit on me. That’s because it involves a member of the baseball Hall of Fame, Bill Veeck. If you don’t know who Bill Veeck was, buckle up. You’re in for a wild ride.

The hand-operated scoreboard at Wrigley Field in Chicago and the ivy covering the outfield wall bricks? Bill Veeck did that when he was a 20-something front office executive for the Chicago Cubs.

Veeck lost his right leg to injuries he received as a Marine in the Pacific during World War II. He was so profoundly addicted to cigarettes he had an ashtray built into his wooden limb.

He owned the Cleveland Indians (1946-49), the St. Louis Browns (1951-53) and the Chicago White Sox, twice (1959-61 and 1975-80). In ’51Veeck sent Eddie Gaedel, 3-feet, 7-inches tall, wearing a uniform with the number 1/8 on the back and a strike zone the size of a buffalo nickel in to pinch hit for the Browns against the Detroit Tigers. He walked on four pitches, and the next day Major League Baseball banned little people. Veeck told the baseball reporters he hoped his tombstone would read, “He Helped the Little Man.”

Three months after Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s color barrier in 1947, Veeck signed Larry Doby to a Cleveland Indians contract to make sure the same thing happened in the American League. The next year he signed Satchel Paige, then 42. Someone wrote that if Paige had been old and white, no one would have given him a second thought. “If Satch were white, he would have been in the majors 25 years ago,” Veeck said. Paige was 6–1. The Indians won the World Series.

Even though he was a marketing and money-making machine, when it came to presidential politics Veeck cast his lot with Socialist Party candidate Norman Thomas, who ran for the office six times. He even voted for Thomas after the man had died. “I’d rather vote for a dead man with class than two live bums,” Veeck said.

Harry Caray singing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” during the seventh inning stretch? It became a more recognizable trademark for Caray than his raspy, mouth-full-of-marbles voice and it was Bill Veeck’s idea.

Go ahead and Google “worst sports uniforms ever.” I guarantee you’ll find the flared collars and black shorts of the 1976 White Sox. People liked to blame Bill’s wife, Mary Frances, for those unis, but it was all Veeck.

The disastrous “Disco Demolition Night” promotion? That was Veeck.

Exploding scoreboards? That was Veeck, too.

The man wrote two autobiographies. Two. And he didn’t run out of stuff.

I was only in his presence once. It was during Veeck’s second stint as owner of the White Sox. I don’t remember how a kid reporter from South Bend, Indiana, managed to talk his way into the press box at old Comiskey Park on Chicago’s South Side, but it happened.

The Bard’s Room was then, and probably still is, a hospitality lounge near the press box where you could get a cold beer and a hot dog before the game. For all I know Veeck invented beer and hospitality, too. The day I was there, Veeck was sitting in the Bard’s Room surrounded by eight or 10 of the usual suspects, the baseball writers from AP, UPI, the Trib, the Sun Times. Guys I knew only by their bylines. Veeck had a telephone in front of him. He was calling the Secretary of the Treasury of the United States and everyone was laughing.

A shipment of fireworks on its way from Mississippi to Illinois, meant to explode from the top of the centerfield scoreboard when Bucky Dent or Carlos May or whoever hit a home run, had been interdicted by ATF agents. The show couldn’t go on. Agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms were attached to the Department of the Treasury. So, Veeck gathered the local reporters, picked up the phone, dialed a number in Washington, D.C., and asked to speak to the secretary of the treasury.

And he got him.

Veeck demanded satisfaction. He paused long enough to accept the sincere apologies of the secretary, which he dutifully relayed to one and all. Funny stories were written. At least that’s the way I remember it.

Here’s the thing. None of us gathered around Bill Veeck actually knew whether or not he was talking to the secretary of the treasury. Hell, it could have been a hot dog salesman on the other end of the line. But it didn’t matter. The P.T. Barnum of baseball knew that, even when they take your fireworks away — no, especially when they take your fireworks away — you can still put on a show.  PS

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

Southwords

A Day at the Open

Memories of a father’s gift

By Tom Allen

My father, decades ago, played one round of golf. Never again.

For Dad — a fisherman and dove hunter — golf was too tedious. He was, however, captivated by televised tournaments, especially the Masters and the U.S. Open. He was an armchair quarterback for college football and a recliner referee for ACC hoops, and a wannabe umpire for Braves baseball. He followed celebrity golfers from his generation — Trevino, Palmer, Nicklaus — and watched enough golf to know the names Mickelson and Els. And Tiger, like Michael Jordan, was a household name.

In 2005, I snagged two tickets for Friday’s U.S. Open Championship on Pinehurst No. 2. I asked Dad if he wanted to go, a Father’s Day gift from a son who broke a hundred once. He smiled at the chance. I smiled too. The day might be a bust — a 46-year-old and an 83-year-old, whose conversations over our adult years covered reminders from Dad to change the oil in my car every 3,000 miles to his chiding me for setting my tomato plants before the soil warmed while I, in turn, reminded him to keep his cellphone turned on and to get a flu shot. These conversations inevitably ended with my changing the oil every 5,000 miles and planting my tomatoes in cool, sometimes frosty, late March. He, likewise, continued to keep his phone off and never rolled up his sleeve.

We met that Friday morning at my home in Whispering Pines. I drove us to Pinehurst, remarkably without any comments from Dad about my tendency to drive faster and brake later than he did. We parked and took a shuttle to the main entrance, arriving as the gates were opening. I suggested a walk through the merchandise tent, not for want of anything but just to see Dad’s reaction to the prices.

A finance major in college, Dad was drafted in 1942, one of two in his graduating class at Oak Ridge Military Academy who wasn’t assigned to a combat unit. Dad ended up in the 109th Finance Disbursing Section, stationed for a few years in England. He received a Certificate of Merit from his commanding officer. The U.S. Army had no idea what a good decision they made by placing an adding machine in his hands instead of a rifle.

At 83, Dad was robust and thriving, but I knew he’d tire trying to trail certain players, so we positioned ourselves in a shady section of a grandstand, an ideal spot to watch approach shots and putts and to see Tiger birdie and tip his cap. Dad loved every minute though, like father, like son, he had to be shushed a few times by a grandstand marshal when players were putting out. Thankfully, she was a member of the church I serve and tempered her shushing with a smile.

By noon he was done. Walking out, we got a glimpse of a Mickelson fairway shot, long and straight. Dad showed no interest in paying U.S. Open food prices. Bojangles was the choice for lunch, his treat. At home, his garden needed tending and his bird dog feeding. It was a short but good day. Actually, one of the best.

Ten years later, at 93, weakened by an illness that caused a rapid decline, Dad and I watched the U.S. Open from his hospice room. A few weeks later, father and son were alone. I whispered I loved him, thanked him for being the best dad ever, told him Mom would be cared for, and gave him my blessing to go home. A few seconds later, as gently as he had lived his life, he left.

In April, Sophie, Countess of Wessex, reflecting on Prince Philip’s final moments said, “It was so gentle. It was like somebody took him by the hand and off he went. Very, very peaceful . . . ” Her words resonated.

Not a U.S. Open passes that I don’t think of that day in ’05 — sunny, warm, just enough breeze. At 63, I’ve moderated my speed and widened my brake time. Dad would be pleased. He would probably shake his head at automotive technology that allows for twice the mileage before an oil change. I imagine he would stick with 3,000. This year, unlike others, I waited to plant my tomatoes until the soil warmed and any chance of frost had passed. Those tomatoes, like Dad on that warm June day, have thrived. In the end, I guess Father really does know best.  PS

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

Southwords

Planting Time

How many fingers am I holding up?

By Jim Moriarty

Eons ago my college baseball team elected to forgo the pleasures of Spring Break in favor of a trip to North Carolina to play other small colleges. I have a black and white picture of us standing outside the barely seaworthy bus that spewed diesel smoke from northern Ohio to North Carolina and back. We looked more like a rock band than a baseball team. That was fitting since we had more honest-to-God musicians among us than honest-to-God ballplayers. We didn’t win a single a game on that trip. The most exciting thing that happened was when our third baseman was bitten by a goose.

Our first baseman was a cellist in the music conservatory. Our right fielder was a quote machine — obscure baseball quotes he unearthed scouring old issues of The New York Times when he was supposed to be studying Plato’s ideal state. What did Don Larsen say he did the night before he pitched a perfect game in the 1956 World Series? “I had a few beers and went to bed around midnight like I always do.”

Spring was the traditional planting season, which is to say I was the one being planted. There is a reason why they call catcher’s equipment the tools of ignorance. In one game after a particularly violent play at the plate that featured me rather prominently on the losing end, I finished the game though I have no independent recollection of it. Those were the days when the entire battery of tests comprising the concussion protocol was whether or not you could stand up. I’m quite certain I set a galaxy-wide record for passed balls that afternoon. If the pitch didn’t hit me, it went to the back stop.

It would please me if I could say that was the only occasion when I experienced an unfortunate collision, but that would be a lie. In the very last game I ever played, on a lovely day at the end of May, I got my nose broken. While the bridge was spared, the cartilage was randomly pushed hither and yon and, to be honest, never made the return trip.

The pitcher that day, who remains a good friend, was nicknamed Ragu. The moniker was hung on him by our right fielder, of course, who found him bafflingly unhittable because, he claimed, the ball had so much spaghetti sauce on it.

Ragu induced one of their hitters to pop the ball up in foul territory well down the third base line. This is ordinarily the third baseman’s play. As the ball comes down, it will curve and, in this case, curve, more or less toward the third baseman. Naturally, the catcher chases the play, too, in case something untoward happens. Heck, the guy could get bitten by a goose, right?

So, I threw my mask clear and trotted along, keeping an eye skyward and pretty much minding my own business waiting to hear the third baseman yell, “I got it!” Crickets. In the absence of detecting the third baseman’s voice, I expected to hear something from Ragu. More crickets.

Gravity being what it is, the ball’s not going to stay up there forever, so I figure my third baseman has run afowl (apologies all around) of something and I was going to have to make the play. I pick up speed, to the extent to which such a thing was possible. “Mine!” I yell, prayerfully. The ball was dropping and curving. I dive, which sounds more impressive than it would have looked on instant replay. The ball is about to drop right in my glove when I see the third baseman’s mitt passing over my outstretched arms, catching the ball, and slamming straight into my nose.

This is not the way they draw this play up.

Fortunately, there was no immediately discernible brain damage. There was, however, a great deal of blood. The extent of our team’s training kit was pretty much confined to a jar of Atomic Balm, a couple of Band-Aids, and some gauze. So, I started stuffing gauze into my nostrils and Ragu returned to the mound.

Here, I confess, things become a little indelicate. The gauze began to unravel. I had a long white string dangling from each nostril, giving the appearance of having treated my injury with, well, need I say more? This was embarrassing enough but, to make matters worse, Ragu couldn’t contain his laughter through even a single windup. His curve ball cackled. His slider chortled.

I would like to say we won the game, but we didn’t. And I didn’t even get a T-shirt out of it, just this lousy nose.  PS

Southwords

Gram “R” Us

From hymns to Chips Ahoy

By Renee Whitmore

“I’m going to do some warsh. Do you need anything warshed?” Gram asked as she carried the laundry basket full of dirty clothes through the living room.

Even as an 8-year-old, I burst into giggles.

“You’re going to what?”

“Warsh clothes.”

“What is warsh?”

A familiar gleam highlighted her hazel eyes. “Oh, Naisy! You just like to laugh at your old Gram.”

One Sunday when I was a teenager, I was in church with Gram and Gramps. Standing beside her, I could hear her singing, adamantly and off key: “What can warsh away my sins?” I excused myself and went to the bathroom to get my face straightened up. The hilarity seemed to escape most of the faithful.

Gram always pronounced “wash” as if there was an R in it. And every single time, even though I knew it was coming, I would explode with laughter. She knew this, too. Saying “warsh” was just a part of her antics.

Gram, whose name was Audrey, was born in 1934. She was a child of the Depression and World War II and saved everything. I remember going through her fridge and pulling out ranch dressing, two years expired.

“Gram, this is old. I’m throwing it away.”

“It’s probably still good, honey.”

The intense mold spotting through the glass looked like an evil science experiment. “Bye, ranch.” I tossed it in the trash can.

You know what else Gram saved? Cookies. She loved cookies, especially chocolate chip ones, but any would do. As a kid, I would sneak them out of her kitchen drawers and, as an adult, it wasn’t unusual for me to find a dozen half-eaten cookies wrapped in paper towels hidden here and there in her bedroom.

Gram and Gramps (his name was Ray) had three kids. The oldest is my mom, and I’m the oldest of six grandchildren. Gram worked all her adult life as a nurse, and she was a good one. She spent her days taking care of patients and knew how to bark out orders like a drill sergeant.

Even as dementia darkened her mind, her wit shined. Once, when she was a patient in her own hospital, I found myself talking to one of the attending nurses on the phone.

“I asked her what her name is,” the nurse told me. “She said, ‘Puddin’ Tane ask me again and I’ll tell you the same.’ She never would tell me her name.”

Gram was an avid reader of this magazine. She always had the latest one, and my columns were bookmarked with Post-it Notes. She could never remember what I had written, but she knew it was her granddaughter behind the words. That made me smile.

In her final years, when dementia won the day, she would recite her favorite Scriptures and sing her favorite hymns. She spent her last days in hospice care, and I sang some of her favorites to her, even if I needed a quick YouTube tutorial first.

Gram passed away peacefully on August 9, 2020. When I was writing her obituary, I asked my Mom, uncle, siblings and cousins to describe her in one word. Here’s what I got:

Tenacious. Feisty. Punchy. Driven. Caring. Steadfast. Faithful. Strong.

After Gram passed away, we were going through her stuff, as family does, and in the bottom of her walker, we found a bunch of half-eaten cookies, carefully wrapped in napkins and tissues. The ants had found them, too.

If Gram had still been alive and I asked her why she had half-eaten cookies in the bottom of her walker she would have said, “I was saving them for later. You never know when you may need a cookie.”

And I would have said, “Gram, we need to warsh your walker.”  PS

When Renee isn’t teaching English or being a professional taxi driver for her two boys, she’s working on her first book.

Southwords

Year of the Fox

The subtle magic of a different kind of circus

By Ashley Wahl

My sweetheart and I share a birthday in February. Last year, same as the year before, we took each other to the circus to celebrate. This year we are training a fox.

OK, the fox is actually a dog. And if we’re being honest with ourselves, we think she might be training us. The point is, it’s a different kind of circus this year, and a timid red dog with large, pointy ears is showing us a thing or two about magic.

In our former life, Alan and I spent the coldest months in Florida, near Sarasota, where the Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey Circus maintained its winter quarters for over 30 years. There, the circus arts are still alive and thriving, and each year — with the exception of this year — its Circus Arts Conservatory puts on Circus Sarasota Under the Big Top, which always falls on our birthday. The show is fantastical. No wild animals, of course. Just a dazzling display of human potential. For us, it felt like the ultimate celebration of life on this strange and beautiful planet. 

Although we were technically living in Asheville (as in, that’s where we got our mail), our Florida home was a no-frills camper van equipped with the bare essentials, including a single-burner camp stove and a portable fridge. Rarely did we stay in one spot for longer than three days, and on weekends, we set up our canopy tent at art and craft festivals up and down the coast, vending our wares alongside fellow travelers.

Suffice it to say there was no room for a dog in our traveling carnival. 

But life twists and turns like a master contortionist. When we put down our stakes in Greensboro last fall, we felt it was time to add a member to our troupe.

Back when we thought we were looking for a guard dog, we hooked up with a German Shepherd rescue that had recently taken in a mama with eight pups. The dam wasn’t exactly a Shepherd — or any other breed that was easily defined. She was smaller — maybe 50 pounds — with a short, red coat and large, pointed ears. Someone found her dodging traffic on a busy road in Fayetteville and, as it turned out, had an unneutered German Shepherd waiting at home. You can guess what happened next.

The whelps were darling — half Shepherd, half whatever their mother was — each one adopted as soon as they were old enough. We brought home mama.

This is a good time to mention that Alan and I are first-time dog owners. And while we had binge-watched several seasons of Dog Whisperer with Cesar Milan, nothing can prepare you for bringing home a shy little fox of a dog who is, quite literally, scared of everything.

And everyone.

While she isn’t exactly the guard dog we envisioned — at least not yet — we named her for the Hindu goddess Durga, protective mother of the universe often depicted perched on the back of a lion or tiger. Talk about a circus act. As for the name, we figured she might grow into it.

Admittedly, watching Dog Whisperer before adopting a dog is a bit like reading Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods before hiking the Appalachian Trail, but our big takeaway is that, often, a dog’s behavior hinges upon its human’s energy. We are witnessing firsthand that Durga’s trust and confidence starts with our own. It’s a wonderful practice — leading by example rather than trying to “fix” what’s “out there.”

And what a beautiful lesson on patience.

Our only expectations are that of our own reactions and yet, by some miracle, our shy little fox is blossoming. 

No, she’s not jumping through hoops or walking a tightrope yet, but what is the circus if not a celebration of the extraordinary?  And isn’t it extraordinary to live life fully and without fear?

We’re getting there.  PS

Contact O.Henry editor Ashley Wahl at awahl@ohenrymag.com.