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.

Southwords

Winter Carnival

Between a rock and a hard place

By Jim Moriarty

It was as if the town was flash frozen. I don’t remember exactly when it happened, nor do I recall the fulsome meteorological explanation of why. Something about a toad-strangling tsunami followed immediately by the polar vortex. The mind mercifully disguises traumatic events like this one — the week my mother, the Dark Lord, and my wife, the War Department, coexisted in a 20×20 space with nothing but a deck of cards, dying cellphones, a finite supply of crossword puzzles, a package of Ballpark franks, two cats and a fireplace with a dwindling pile of wood.

Like most transplanted Northerners, we once held the ability of our Southern brethren to drive in snow in utter contempt. It wasn’t personal, though I confess we did at first find it unusual when the merest whisper of snow, the slightest suggestion of a flake wafting from the sky on butterfly’s wings, could by itself empty the entire dairy section of the Winn Dixie. Fools that we were. We had been raised in a land of salt and sand and hard-packed stuff that your tires could bite into like a ferret sinking its teeth into an old man’s calf. We had yet to meet real, honest to God, Southern ice.

We knew ice, of course. Through years of evolution we’d learned to navigate it on skating rinks using blades sharp enough to carve a leg of lamb. But drive on it? Where we came from only Zambonis did that, and that was strictly to make more of it.

So, when the rain hit, and then turned to slushy snow, and then turned into serious, deep snow and then froze as solid as that 5,300-year-old caveman they found in the Alps and then stayed that way for day after day after day, well, it was a problem. The first night was filled with the sounds of overburdened pine branches cracking and snapping, followed by the dependable echo of transformers exploding. We were in for it.

Our street just happens to be in a neighborhood with a three-grackle limit — any more than that sitting on the wire at one time and the power goes out. We do not blame anyone for this; it’s just a property of the property, as it were. Our part of the grid has a tick. But this was a beast of a different stripe. The whole town was down.

With some difficulty, and relying on my years of Northern exposure, I was able to rescue the Dark Lord from her apartment and bring her to our house. We closed off all but two adjoining rooms and put a fire in the fireplace. It was cozy. How long could this last? It would get warm. The sun would melt the snow. The birds would sing in the fields. The electricity would be restored and, with it, the heat pump and the stove. Hot water would blossom like forsythia in the springtime. Only it didn’t get warm. It got even colder.

Because age has its privileges, the Dark Lord got the couch. The War Department and I settled into a sleeping bag on the floor. The cats looked at us much the way we once looked at Southern drivers. Resting like mountain lions high up on the backs of overstuffed chairs, you simply knew they were looking down, wearing their little fur coats, thinking to themselves, “You people have no idea what you’re doing, do you?”

Day one. Day two. Day three. Still no electricity. After our flashlight batteries flickered and died, the remaining sources of light after sunset were the wood fire and a single oil lamp that, I believe, had last been used by Ahab on the Pequod. Encouraged by a captive audience, the Dark Lord found this a splendid time to deliver a rambling, and yet oddly comprehensive, historical perspective of the many things the War Department had done wrong. This involved everything from her husband’s — “I’m right here, mother” — shortcomings to our current lack of modern conveniences. By day four several of the area hotels were up and running and I managed to relocate the Dark Lord into one of them, thus saving her from being smothered in her sleep.

It was six, no seven, no six — oh, I don’t know — days until a power crew came down our little dead-end street reconnecting the doohickey to the thermocouple. They were from Houston, Texas. God bless Houston, Texas. I ran from the house waving my arms as if they were the Allies liberating Paris. Vive les Americains. Remember the Alamo.

We don’t laugh at Southern drivers anymore. And if snow is forecast, hi, ho, hi, ho, it’s off to the Harris Teeter we go.  PS

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

Southwords

Immortal Stories

By Jim Moriarty

Toward the end of his new book, Gods at Play, Tom Callahan writes, “By now you must know, I’m the hero of all my stories.” It was one of his throw-away dinner lines I heard often enough in the evening at British Opens and Masters and places like that. It was partially — but only partially — true, like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day saying, “I’m a god. I’m not the god . . . I don’t think.”

In one of those publishing house blurbs, some marketing type once decided it was a good idea to describe Callahan’s writing somewhere between the goalposts of “lighthearted” and “airy,” which works if the guy would describe the arrow from a crossbow the same way. If Callahan ever knew the person who wrote it he would have said, “sweet writer,” like patting a 4-year-old on the head.

Callahan went to a Catholic university, Mount St. Mary’s, and the U.S. Marines. That he was a Marine was perfect for him because he always liked to play against type. He was a sports columnist at the Cincinnati Enquirer and, later, the Washington Post before becoming the sports guy for Time and then U.S. News and World Report. I got to know him when he started writing poetry for Golf Digest.

There are a couple of his stories I couldn’t find in Gods at Play, like the time he kidnapped Nancy Lopez, who was coming into Cincinnati for the LPGA Championship in the midst of her rookie hot streak. Callahan wanted an interview. Hell, the whole world wanted an interview. He was told it was impossible. So, Tom guessed what plane she’d arrive on and met her at baggage claim. She assumed the tournament had sent a driver to pick her up. Tom looks more like a chauffeur than Jeeves looks like a butler, so Nancy didn’t think much of it, and Tom didn’t do anything to convince her otherwise. He grabbed her luggage and loaded everything, plus Nancy Lopez, into his beat-up, messy old sportswriter’s car, the anti-limo. He got his interview. She still laughs about it and never has figured out why she got in the damn car to begin with. He was probably telling her a story and she wanted to hear the end.

And he only told half the truth about the time he played with Jack Nicklaus in the pro-am at Kings Island, the Nicklaus-designed course under power lines where they played the LPGA Championship for longer than any real golf tour should have. Tom’s a big guy and, when he caught a drive, it would go. On the first tee, the local boy rose to the occasion. He killed it.

“Chase that, Jack,” he said to Nicklaus, loud enough for the gallery to hear. Nicklaus outdrove him, but just barely. A yard, maybe two. Out in the fairway Callahan’s next shot was a cold, sideways shank. “I won’t be chasing that one, Tom,” said Nicklaus.

Callahan collected writers the way the Medicis collected Leonardos and Michaelangelos. He became Red Smith’s legs when the great Pulitzer Prize-winner got too old to scramble after a quote or two and, later, at British Opens he reprised his role as taxi driver for World Golf Hall of Famer Dan Jenkins, who always believed driving on the left — if it had to be done at all — should be done sparingly, and by someone else. Jenkins called Callahan Simon because he’d once had a driver by that name.

If Callahan was in L.A. he found Jim Murray. If he was at a horse race he was standing on Bill Nack’s withers. When I learned he wasn’t going to Fort Worth for Jenkins’ funeral a couple of years ago, he told me he was tired of going to them. But that was against type, too. It was more a case of “Elvis is Dead and I Don’t Feel So Good Myself.” It didn’t matter, though, because he’d already supplied the harp music in Golf Digest, writing the best sendoff any sports guy ever got.

Of course, Tom didn’t get everything right. He thought O.J. was innocent until he saw the Bruno Maglis.

I can’t give you the highlights from Gods at Play. The book is 265 pages long, and if you skip any of them you’ll be poorer for it. But here’s just one story. Callahan knew Oscar Robertson from his days playing for the Royals in Cincinnati. Oscar was a tough guy. And, later, after Robertson helped Kareem Abdul Jabbar win an NBA title in Milwaukee, Callahan and Kareem, by then a Laker, had a conversation about him:

“The first time we ever spoke,” I said, “you told me you didn’t really know Oscar. But you came to know him, right?”

“And to love him,” he said. “And to love playing with him. And, probably a little too much, to love watching him play.”

“He was a bit cold-blooded for me,” I said.

“No, he had the capacity for joy that all great players have. He wouldn’t show it to you, though. Or you wouldn’t understand where to look for it. It’s not in the box score, you know.”

But it’s spilled all over the pages of Gods at Play.  PS

Southwords

The Tinsel War

By Matthew Moriarty

If there is one thing my father and I agree on this holiday season, it’s that this is going to be, unquestionably, a tinsel year.

You see, my older sister, Jennifer, and I are the offspring of a mixed marriage. My father loves tinsel on our family Christmas tree. My mother absolutely loathes it.

Naturally, some years ago, Jennifer and I were forced to pick sides. I went into Dad’s camp. My traitorous sister sided with Mom. The battle lines were drawn. This type of conflict can tear any normal family apart. Luckily, ours isn’t that normal. Family legend holds, for instance, that back in the “old country” brothers Cormac and Connor Moriarty actually split the family in two over whether it was appropriate to add a cinnamon stick to a burning log of peat. So, at least in terms of important holiday decisions, we have a long history of this sort of thing.

On the eve of a duel to settle the cinnamon issue once and for all, the story goes, both died simultaneously of acute liver failure, leaving matters to their argumentative progeny. Thus remains a simmering conflict. The brothers were too poor to buy a cinnamon stick anyway.

But I digress. Knowing how hard family conflict could be on one’s organs, we eventually entered into an uneasy treaty. As a compromise, Mom agreed that every other year would be a tinsel year. On the face of things, this would seem the perfect compromise. However, time being linear and memories being not, it seems that every year in November the same debate erupts over whether last year was a tinsel year. I’m still convinced that Dad and I got chiseled out of few good tinsel years.

So, why do I love Christmas tree tinsel? Um . . . good question. I really don’t know. It’s terribly tacky stuff. It can take an otherwise beautiful Christmas tree and turn it into a monument to white trash tastes. It melts onto the lights, sticks to the dog and generally gets everywhere. It feels, in a word, kind of creepy.

The only logical conclusion is that I love tinsel because I inherited it from my dad. Just to be sure, I called him up and asked him why he likes Christmas tree tinsel.

“It’s part of the overall experience,” he explained. “Why do you like the leaves to turn in the fall? It’s part of the overall experience.”

I pressed him for a better answer. Give me something tangible, I pleaded.

“Well, it’s home entertainment as well,” he offered, “when the cats yack it up.”

There we go, I thought. In the interest of family fair play (and so as not to unduly fan the flames), I also asked my mom why she hates tinsel.

“How many reasons do you want?” she replied. “For one, it gets all electrified. It grabs onto the cats and they drag it all around the house.” (Editor’s note: You may wish to find a comfy seat. She’s just getting started.) “They eat it and you have to pull it out of their butts. You can’t vacuum it. It winds its way around the vacuum and you have to flip it over and pull it out by hand. It’s so nasty. Children play with it and you look at them and see little pieces of shiny junk sticking out of the corners of their mouths. You pull it out and it’s a foot long. Yuck.”

“Anything else?” I asked her.

“Those are a few reasons. I could name others.”

She went on unstoppably about finding mysterious pieces of tinsel on the carpet in July (“Where has it been the last six months? I have no idea.”) and about its other horrible tendencies to infest every nook and cranny of our home. She was still ranting about tacky tinsel when I had to hang up.

One year my mom attempted to end this protracted war by buying static-cling-free tinsel. It was oddly translucent strips of plastic that looked and felt nothing like real tinsel. The peace offering actually had the opposite effect. Dad and I hated the “fake tinsel” and demanded a do-over the next year. That spring, Mom found a bird’s nest made out of the stuff. I’m glad something found a decent use for it.

About five years ago, with Jennifer and me out of the house, my mom somehow won a decisive battle. The exact details of the skirmish are lost to history, but one thing is for sure: We haven’t had a tinsel year since.

That is, until now. That’s right. It’s a tinsel year. I asked my dad, just to make sure.

“Matty,” he says, “it’s always a tinsel year. What the hell’s the matter with you? What kind of question is that? Go ask your mother.”

So, to be on the safe side, I also asked Mom.

“No,” she replied, as if I must be joking. “Of course not. It’s never a tinsel year.”  PS

(This column originally appeared in the December 2007 edition of PineStraw. Matt’s father feels that, if ever there was a tinsel year, 2020 must be it.)

Southwords

Don’t Forget to Write

For our family, the mailman was more than just a welcome sight — he was a lifeline

By Ruth Moose

As a child during World War II, I lived with my grandparents on a farm near Cottonville in Stanly County, North Carolina. With gas rationing, there was no traffic and so quiet we could hear the mailman long before we could see the cloud of dust his car made on the unpaved road. In a world turned upside down and torn apart, mail was the only thing we could count on.

We lived for the mail. It meant the world to us. We had the radio and a weekly newspaper, also delivered by the mailman. But letters told us the people we loved were safe.  At least for the time being.  My grandparents’ four children were in four corners of the world: my father stationed in France; my Uncle Tom a navigator with the Army Air Corps in London; my Aunt Pearl, an Army nurse, was with MacArthur’s troops in the Philippines; and my Uncle Edgar, who had just graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill with a masters in physics was in Washington, D.C., and alternately, Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Each of them wrote a letter home every week. You could depend on it.  And my grandparents wrote back.

When two weeks went by without a letter from her daughter, my grandmother was more than worried, fearing the worst. She sent inquiries. Discovered my aunt was in this country, hospitalized with a mental and physical breakdown. But she was alive and recovered.

The mail not only brought letters each week but also a brand new, fresh copy of my grandmother’s favorite reading, The Saturday Evening Post. That was her recreation, her relaxation, her reward at the end of each long, worried day. On special occasions the mailman might bring a box of Whitman’s Sampler, picked up from a PX somewhere I’m sure. We rationed a single chocolate a day as long as it lasted.

The mailman also brought books! My aunt in D.C. was a librarian and regularly mailed me books, books that were read aloud to me until I taught myself to read. Poems from A Child’s Garden of Verses, The Adventures of Peter Rabbit and others. Books were magic doors to a larger world and gave me a lifelong love of the printed word, of learning, of no greater pleasure than reading.

When the war was over, they all came home, wounded in body, mind and spirit, but thankfully alive. They continued the weekly letters home and to each other the rest of their lives.

After my grandfather died, the farm was sold and my grandmother lived three months at a time with her four children: my aunt a school nurse in New Jersey; my uncle on the faculty at N.C. State in Raleigh; Uncle Edgar teaching at Georgia State; and my family in Albemarle. Always letters back and forth, specialty cards for all the occasions. Cards to be kept and displayed on mantels and dressers. Cards to be re-enjoyed for days and weeks following. Not the same as today’s emails, a blink here and gone forever. I remember getting an e-condolence card after my husband’s death and crying in frustration. If the sender really wanted to send some sympathy, they could have bought a card, or written a note, signed, addressed, stamped and mailed it. An e-condolence was a quick click and no more thought than that. Obligation over.

Sadly none of the old letters survived. Tossed in the purging of estates after a death; nieces, nephews, cousins, grandchildren who saw them as only pieces of paper, not family history.

During the pandemic, I’ve being purging files, boxes from storage and attics. Deep in one box I was amazed to find my letters to my husband, who was then my boyfriend during our four college years. He had somehow, somewhere, kept them and they had survived many moves, packing and unpacking. Don’t tell me emails could do that. Not in a million years. Yellowed and with three-cent stamps, the letters tell the story of a summer romance that lasted over 50 years. I’ve been reading, alternately laughing and crying. We were so young.  So 1950s crazy and scared. The question is: Will my sons want these letters? My grandchildren? I can only hope.  PS

Ruth Moose taught Introduction to Writing Short Fiction at UNC-Chapel Hill for 15 years. Her students have since published New York Times Bestsellers and are getting Netflixed. She recently returned to her roots in the Uwharrie Mountains. 

Southwords

The Inconsequential Comic

All alone with a microphone

By Traci Loper

“Shine bright like a diamond,” I began in the dullest way imaginable.

“Shine bright like a diamond.” I looked around at the audience flatly. I hear a few chuckles.

“Shine bright like a diamond,” I sing blandly, followed by a long, deep sigh.

The crowd lost it. More or less. I committed to the most cynical version of Rhianna’s then-popular song to kick off my first ever stand-up comedy show at an off-off-off Sunset comedy club in Los Angeles. It was so “off” kids colored with Crayons there during the day. That may have been the only big laugh I got during my five minutes of rocking the mic that night, but honestly I can’t remember. It’s a pretty big blur, and not because it was five minutes of bliss. It was five minutes of dread, regret, embarrassment, effort, and carefully planned talking points with jokes mixed in that crashed and burned.

OK, fine . . . looking back, the topics I chose for my first night of stand-up weren’t that great, but they were mine.

I’ve been entertaining for as long as I can remember. From the moment I could string sentences together, my mom would usher me into the center of a room and I’d just ramble. People would laugh and laugh, I’m guessing mostly because I was a child, I wasn’t shy, and nothing I said made much sense. (So, what’s changed, you ask.)

It was mostly at family gatherings, but she would occasionally take me to work with her at the Hammond Nursing Home. It was there where I found my most captive audiences. Surprising, I know.

I’d chat with the elderly through my mom’s entire shift. I’d go room to room doling out hugs and humor. Maybe that was the first sign of my desire to entertain. I think it’s fair to say, I didn’t really know what I was doing or what they were laughing at — but I haven’t stopped since.

When I finally made the move to L.A. in my mid-20s to pursue an acting career, I naturally gravitated toward comedy. Perhaps that was a mistake. My friends didn’t help. They were constantly on me to do some funny voice, or character I had come up with.

And every time they asked, I delivered. “OMG, Trace, you should be on SNL.” I, of course, thought this was ridiculous. Making your friends laugh was easy, bringing laughter to the world, not so much.

As a kid, I loved SNL and was in awe of Steve Martin, Gilda Radner, Jane Curtin and so many more. If I could follow in their footsteps, sign me up.

And sign up I did . . . at the Groundlings — that famous improv school that has churned out many comedic celebrities, like Will Ferrell and Kristen Wiig. I enrolled in regular acting classes for TV and film. I even joined a local sketch group that some of my theater friends started. I had a sharp wit, but now I had finally — and I suppose mistakenly — accepted that I was seriously funny. Look, if everyone around you is telling you the same thing, you eventually start to believe it. And confidence is never bad. Especially for an entertainer. Especially in Los Angeles.

The first rule of improv is to “Yes, and . . . ” everything. You have to agree to what your scene partner says, no matter what. If they say, “I see your pants are on fire,” then your pants are on fire and you better start jumping around like crazy. The moment you say “No,” the scene is over. The most important person in the scene is the person playing opposite you, not yourself.

But with stand-up, it’s just you. And your solitary goal is to make the audience laugh. That’s pressure of a different magnitude. Even though diamonds are formed under pressure, it takes a ton of polishing to make them shine. I’ve learned I sparkle best with spontaneity. I’ll leave stand-up to the pros.  PS

Traci Loper is an actor, writer and dreamer. After 20 years she ditched the Hollwood Hills for the Sandhill in search of less traffic, off-street parking and a slower pace of life.

Southwords

Relevance Is Relative

Put that in your pipe and smoke it

By Susan S. Kelly

If nothing else, these times have taught us that every 15 minutes everything changes: statistics, rules of (social) engagement, open restaurants. Staying relevant has gotten harder than ever. But I try. I do (is “do” the relevant verb?).

Venmo and Snapchat and Twitter. I was an early-adopter of email back in the dinosaur ages of dial-up. Facebook isn’t relevant anymore, ICYMI. I try to keep up with acronyms. LOL and OMG are way, way passé, ICYMI. They’ve been demoted to crossword puzzle clues. I admit to being less than a pop culture maven — I tried Game of Thrones, I really did, but there were just So. Many. Bad. Guys. But the degree of my deficit really hit home in a recent New Yorker cartoon by Roz Chast. She’d drawn a character whose dreams were compartmentalized and labeled with words like “existential threats,” “angst,” “unspecified anxiety,” and “fantods.”

Fantods? What the heck are fantods? Some New Yorker-y thing, I comforted myself, an acronym for uber-cool Manhattanites. But no, fantod is right there in Merriam-Webster: a state of extreme nervousness or restlessness. And just like that, my vocabulary relevance has been downgraded.

It’s hardly the first time my relevance has come into question. When my daughter looked at my country songs playlist, she rolled her eyes. “What?” I asked.

“The Dixie Chicks’ Wide Open Spaces,” she said with a sniff. “So predictable.”

Well, we all know how that turned out. The Dixie Chicks don’t even have a relevant name anymore.

A few years back I went to a performance of Thornton Wilder’s Pulitzer-prize winning play Our Town. Along with the cast biographies, the playbill listed a helpful glossary of terms used in the production. “To string some beans,” was one entry. “A process by which green beans are stripped of their ‘string’ seam by breaking the tip, usually with a fingernail, and pulling it down the length of the bean.” Hello? The audience needs a definition for stringing beans?

“Catch 40 winks” read another. “To take a short nap.” I mean, as if the play were in Russian. Who knew the expression “40 winks” was no longer relevant? Though to be honest, at our house we refer to 40 winks as a drop-down. I began to understand why as teenagers, my children looked strangely at me when I’d end an argument with the phrase my father always used: “Put that in your pipe and smoke it.” To their credit, and relevance, most things they associated with pipes are illegal substances.

The relevance of graphic novels escapes me too. Comics belong in a twirling rack and portray Richie Rich in a 14-karat gold swimming pool, or Archie and Veronica at Riverdale High, not in an adult-reading genre. (Although I do vaguely recall reading a comic-book version of A Tale of Two Cities at some low point in summer-reading requirements . . . ).

But I’m glad to see Bless Your Heart lose all relevance. Anyone possessed of authentic Southern snark knew about Bless Your Heart long, long before it appeared on cocktail napkins. You’ll have to find another way to criticize and patronize what flies so low it’s undetectable by radar.

No one’s required to stay relevant, of course. My husband gets along just fine without knowing who Pharrell is. When I try to tell him what “meta” means, he nods and goes right back to The Wall Street Journal. The thing is, not being relevant is the same thing as not being at a party. No one notices if you’re not at a party. Think about it. They only notice if you are.

You know what else doesn’t care about relevance? College essay prompts. Year in, year out, the prompts are the same boring choices. What changes are the relevant words you have to use: Cooperation. Collaboration. Global. They’re the vocab biggies right now. But who am I to talk? If I had my way, we’d all speak in old English. “Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote/The droghte of March hath perced to the roote . . . ”

Why else was I made to memorize the opening lines of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales if not as a safeguard against the fearsome state of complete and utter irrelevance?  PS

Susan S. Kelly is a blithe spirit, author of several novels, and a proud grandmother.