Southwords

Party Animals

The surprise of a lifetime

By Jim Moriarty

When one grows so old that wedding anniversaries might as well be counted with Roman numerals like Super Bowls, there are a few curious rubberneckers who wonder exactly how the disgraceful business got going in the first place. In my case it’s simple: It began on her 21st birthday.

It should be noted that it was the ’70s, which excuses nothing but explains more than one would care to admit, and the occasion was a surprise party. Invitations to the gala were issued in the customary fashion of the day: “Hey, I hear Robin’s having a party Friday night.” Robin was the rarest of all birds, someone who had his own apartment. This meant that his forehead was stamped with the words Event Venue.

She for whom the surprise gala was arranged was scheduled to arrive at, oh, let’s say 8 o’clock. The hour came and went with no sign of the featured dish. As the years have trickled past, I’ve come to realize that time is not a subject she deals with on an even playing field. But I digress. The issue at hand was the ’70s, and barely half an hour after the clock chimed 8, it rang out Bong:30.

Those who know me well know that my own proclivities in recreational consumables are confined almost entirely to barley and hops. Yet here I was surrounded by people staring at a red lava lamp. I resorted to the only thing I felt truly comfortable doing. I began twanging my Ozark harp. Now, my teeth — then as now — are to modern orthodontics what a 1952 set of World Book encyclopedias is to the internet. The uppers are arranged in such a way that, while not totally random, bring to mind the punting formation of a peewee football team. Like Houdini being double jointed, however, it was precisely these irregularities that allowed me — someone with the musical ability of a sugar beet — to so bewitch the assembled partygoers with my virtuosic twanging they were as enthralled as if they were listening to Muddy Waters.

At precisely this point, when I had the navel gazers eating out of the palm of my hand — musically speaking, of course — she for whom the surprise gala was arranged came through the front door. Two things happened. Well, one thing. The thing that didn’t happen was for anyone to summon the wherewithal to yell, as one does at a surprise party, “Surprise!” That nugget was apparently lost in the fog of the ’70s. The thing that did happen was for the celebrant to lock her gaze firmly upon my own (I’d paused the musical interlude, though I was quite prepared to accompany any birthday serenading) and say, “What is he doing here?”

Granted, it didn’t seem as though we’d gotten off on the surest footing but, since she for whom the surprise gala was arranged and I were the only two people at the party who actually seemed to remember it was her birthday, one thing led to another and I eventually suggested we go, pas de deux, for a cup of coffee at the local Dunkin’ Donuts. This she agreed to do even though I now know she detests coffee. Had I known that at the time I would have felt a bit spiffier than I actually did.

It was a rainy, unseasonably chilly night, and we spent some time hobnobbing over warm liquids. Then, in an act of selfless generosity that would have made Mother Teresa blush like a schoolgirl, she suggested we take an extra large bag of doughnuts back to the party, stuffing it full of powdered, glazed and chocolate-covered with sprinkles as if she was packing the muzzle of a howitzer.

When we parked at the curb outside Robin’s apartment, she for whom the surprise gala was arranged exited the car with the bag o’ doughnuts in hand. Unfortunately, she’d seized the bag at the bottom, not the top, and the doughnuts tumbled into the rainy gutter. I can say without fear of contradiction that not even Brooks Robinson at the height of his Gold Glove prowess could have barehanded the slow-rolling grounders with the speed and agility she displayed that night. Having crammed the slightly baptized doughnuts back into the bag from which they’d fallen, she for whom the surprise gala was arranged burst through the door, held the bag high over her head and yelled, “Doughnuts!”

A three-legged antelope on the Serengeti Plain would have had a greater chance of survival than those doughnuts did that night. I said to myself, then and there, this is the lass for me. After all, in every gutter a few sprinkles must fall.  PS

Southwords

Four-Alarm Coffee

Breakfast with fire and rescue

By Beth MacDonald

I’d really like to be one of those calm, put-together people when a crisis strikes, someone who’s graceful and elegant. Someone who can keep their wits about them when everyone else is losing theirs. My husband, Mason, somehow pulls it off. I am more like Kevin from Home Alone, slapping my face and screaming. Catastrophe never seems to have the decency to strike after I’ve gotten dressed and applied fresh makeup.

Generally speaking, I wake up early, drink my coffee on my back porch in my pajamas and admire my garden. My hair looks Einstein-crazy and I’ve got the previous night’s makeup smudged on my face. Entertaining the Fire and Rescue Squad is not part of my normal routine.

One morning, coffee mug in hand, my dog was barking at what I naturally assumed was the usual — nothing.

“Shhh! Stop. Stop. Don’t bark. There are only deer out there.”

“Bark. Bark. Barkbarkbark.”

I rolled my eyes. I needed to engage the two useful brain cells that had awakened. I looked toward our garage and saw plumes of smoke rising above two trucks parked on the side of the detached building. I ran over, saw flames a few inches from the vehicles, rushed inside to wake Mason, and called 911.

Exactly two breathless seconds into the call, I wished I hadn’t skipped Pilates for, let’s say, the last month. Between wheezing gasps stating my name and address, I tried to express the potential urgency of the fire. I had to repeat myself three times. The 911 operator couldn’t understand me. I sounded like Darth Vader trying to make an emergency call that the Death Star was about to blow up. Heaving, hunched over, I was finally able to get out the basic details.

Mason calmly got out of bed, went directly to the source of the problem, took a shovel, and began to put the fire out at its base. I supervised. “Maybe you should get away from the gas tanks. They’re exactly six inches from the flames,” I said. He ignored me. He had on matching sweats, sneakers, his hair looked combed, and he was easily extinguishing a potential disaster. I looked like Garth from Wayne’s World.

I was still trying to catch my breath when the firetruck pulled up. I looked down at myself, and bolted inside (they probably thought I was in search of my oxygen tank). I tried to put my hair in a ponytail so I looked somewhat presentable, but my low pony only made me look like a young man in Colonial America eager to start his woodworking apprenticeship.

I went back outside. Vanity is useless when you’re at the mercy of others. Why was I even trying? The fire marshal was now on the scene and looking directly at our chimney, asking if we knew anyone who would have put hot ashes in the pine needles. Wait, what?

I looked at Mason, my eyes bulging. “YOU did this?”

“Yeah, I’m the dummy.” He said it so matter of fact, without shame.

“You took the ashes out of the galvanized bucket and put them IN the pine needles?”

“Yeah, uh huh, that happened.” He stood there, nodding, arms crossed, shoulders shrugging.

I put my hoodie over my head and pulled the strings shut. I slowly started backing away toward my neighbor’s house like I lived there and was just an innocent bystander. My neighbor was taking pictures of the firetrucks in front of my house so I tried to hide in the bushes instead.

Mason thanked everyone that came by to put the fire out. The town’s fire and rescue team was accommodating and kind, even though I knew we’d be the topic of a social media, public service announcement later. I could see it now, “Smokey Says Don’t Be a Moron.” I’m sure they wouldn’t use the word “moron,” they are much more professional than that. My internal monologue is not. Sometimes I think our lives serve as a living, breathing Public Service Announcement, a bold kind of volunteerism.

While we were very aware of the danger we put ourselves in, we were even more grateful that we had a capable and amiable Fire and Rescue Squad. Later, Mason dropped off a thank you note with some cookies our daughter made. He apologized and promised not to be left unsupervised again — a promise he’s not capable of keeping considering I have no idea where he is at this very moment, and I can hear the not so distant buzz of power tools.  PS

Beth MacDonald is a Southern Pines suburban misadventurer that likes to make words up. She loves to travel with her family, read everything she can, and shop locally for her socks.

Southwords

Dispelling Darkness

A candle for every season, every reason

By Tom Allen

Candles go with Christmas like eggs with Easter; turkey with Thanksgiving. Choose tapers or tea lights, votives or pillars, from hundreds in stores or online. Some burn a flame, others need batteries. Dripless or scented, there’s a candle for every occasion.

Candles, although not high-tech like cars or computers, remain a billion dollar industry, fueled by wellness and self-care trends. Cocooning requires candles. Staying in has become the new going out. Open the Hello Fresh box, pour a glass from wine-of-the-month delivery, and light a seasonal scent from Bath and Body Works. “Alexa, play some Diana Krall.”

Used to be candles served practical purposes, though occasionally, decorative. My mother, pragmatic and minimalist when it came to Christmas decor, stationed two red tapers at each end of our mantel, with cellophane intact. The tapers remained unlit despite the manger scene, even on Christmas Eve. When the power went out during a January storm she might remove the cellophane and light the candles, but ambience had nothing to do with kindling a flame.

Electric candles, with opaque, orange bulbs from the 1950s and ’60s, illuminated front windows; by the ’70s, Colonial Williamsburg’s influence reached small-town N.C. White lights replaced colored. Clear lights glowed in our windows, lit our tree, and twined around the lamppost. But red tapers, cellophane intact, still stood on the mantel. I’m not sure Mom ever bought into the scented candle craze. French Vanilla? Frosted Cranberry? If the power goes out, who needs aromatherapy? Gimme some light so I can see how to brush my teeth.

Today, chandlers (the fancy name for folks who make candles) market to our olfactory receptors and life situations. Tough day at the office? How ’bout a Stress Relief 3-Wick Eucalyptus + Spearmint or a soy-based Lime Basil Mandarin? Snowed in without a good read? Light a Frostbeard Studio brand favorite — Bookstore, a blend of “driftwood, mahogany, coffee, and the subtle scent of leather.” Missing your homeland? Homesick specializes in candles that “tap into your sensory memory through nostalgic scents that remind you of the place you grew up.” For 30 bucks you can take North Carolina on the road over the holidays and “breathe in memories . . . recalling blackberries, peaches, and notes of smoky barbecue. Spicy hints of cinnamon and clove are balanced with mild and sweet tonka bean and amber.” Tonka bean? What’s a tonka bean? 

I confess, my wife and I bought into the seasonal scents — Bahama Breeze, Clean Cotton, Apple Spice. And for the holidays, Balsam and Cedar, Christmas Cookie, Home for the Holidays. Our favorite, from locally owned Seagrove Candles: Yuletide, our answer to “Candle of the Month” for December.

No electric candles in our windows. Only traditional red tapers, sans wrappers, line our mantel — three on each end, with brass holders of varying heights. Tea lights for my grandmother’s buffet, pillars rest on our dining room table, and votives cast a glow on departed loved ones’ photos.

An Advent wreath, with three purple candles and one pink, lit weekly to remind us of the season’s significance, sits beside a Hummel Nativity. Last Christmas, thanks to my wife, after 27 years, the remaining two Wise Men found their way to the creche, illuminated by the wreath’s “Christ Candle,” reserved for Christmas Eve.

Christmas and Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights, fall during the darkest days of the year. Light plays an important role in those narratives. Angelic light surrounds frightened shepherds; a star guides Magi to a newborn king; a tiny bit of oil miraculously burned for eight days in a temple candelabrum. Perhaps that’s why we light Advent wreaths, menorahs, and Yankee Candles during light-starved December — to remind us that light dispels darkness, whether inside our cocoons or deep within our souls.

So strike a match, light up the mantel, kindle your own flame. Create light. Be light. Illuminate your corner of the world. What a wonderful, priceless gift. PS

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

Southwords

Fare and Fowl

Not all feasts are created equal

By Jim Moriarty

To be perfectly honest, my mother, gone some years now, was a terrible — though determined — cook. I’ve been given to understand that many children develop a near Pavlovian fondness for some dish or other of their mother’s creation. This was as likely to happen in our house as acquiring an appetite for ptomaine.

In fairness, there may have been a genetic marker involved. My mother’s mother would never have been mistaken for Emeril Lagasse. Her signature dish was a chocolate cake with vanilla frosting. The distinctive feature of this dessert was its shape. It collapsed so utterly in the middle it looked like the entrance to a coalmine. This depression was then camouflaged with a generous application of frosting, which meant that the middle piece was 90 percent vanilla frosting and 10 percent chocolate cake. One morning I beat my older brothers to the kitchen, sliced off an entire side of the cake and helped myself to the middle. When they awoke, well, let’s just say had the FBI offered me relocation in its witness protection program I’d have gladly accepted.

As for our mother, while her repertoire of favorites may have lacked a certain palatability, her sweet devotion to them was heartfelt and unwavering. In the kitchen she was a juggernaut of dietary don’ts and never more devoted to them than during the holidays. It was almost an endearing trait. Almost.

Where to begin? Mother never saw a piece of meat that wasn’t a delivery vehicle for trichinosis. In her zeal to cook all things through and through, even flapjacks were suspect. Joan of Arc would have been considered medium rare in our house. Thanksgiving turkey didn’t need carving, it needed sweeping. On other occasions, should she be inclined to tackle a leg of lamb, she proclaimed — as if the advice had been passed down on a stone tablet — that it simply must be put in a cold oven. In practice, this was a bit like saying you ought to have a sip of cool water before hiking through Death Valley in August. One would have been inclined to accept the cold oven gambit as Gospel had the lamb not come out the other end the color and consistency of a Tootsie Roll.

And, of course, there were the complementary dishes. On one occasion my wife and I took our children to her house for dinner. This, in and of itself, could have been reason to alert Social Services. Nonetheless, we went. One of the sides she served was jellied beef consommé. Now, what child doesn’t crave this? I’m only surprised it doesn’t come in Popsicle form. On the ride home our son, who had been politely quiet all evening, piped up:

“Mom,” he said, “meat Jell-O?”

Say no more.

At a Thanksgiving of my youth, one of my brothers, home from college, seemed determined to get to the bottom of one of the great mysteries of each and every holiday meal. “Mother,” says he, “exactly who was it in our family who liked Harvard beets?” He assumed  there was some distant provenance, as murky as the crimson sauce, which was as viscous as 10W-30. No holiday was ever considered complete without them, though I feel safe in saying no piece of beet was ever in danger of meeting a fork. She didn’t even like them.

Friday nights were simplicity itself. A small plate, a Mrs. Paul’s fish stick and a fruit-shaped squeeze bottle of lemon juice. I was in high school before I discovered fish weren’t rectangular.

And there were the New Year’s Eve celebrations which routinely required oyster stew. Not just any oyster stew, mind you, but cold oyster stew garnished with an oil slick of butter on the surface. The thought of it gives me the shivers still. This was frequently paired with creamed onions, though the onions (Was the word ‘pearl’ ever more miscast?) in question appeared to have been scooped out of someone’s Gibson martini.

Mother was not unaware that her culinary skills were considered, shall we say, suspect. She tolerated the eye rolling and, I think, took a certain pleasure in delivering her own traditions with droll satisfaction. And I confess there are times when a parched piece of white meat and some lumpy gravy still seem like the finest meal ever made.  PS

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

Southwords

The State of Mystery

Across North Carolina, tales of unexplained happenings abound — and delight — come October

By Tom Allen

If ghosts and graveyards peak curiosity, October is your month. Check local listings for all things haunted or headless. Since Washington Irving penned his scary legend in 1820, “Sleepy Hollows” abound. I recall a couple of childhood nightmares, courtesy of Ichabod Crane.

Now that I’m grown up, lions and tigers and bears are a piece-a-cake. But vampires and zombies? Jeepers creepers! I likewise recoil from chainsaw murderers and psychotic clowns. Social media and 24/7 breaking news merge reality with fiction. I don’t need another autopsy on NCIS or Criminal Minds to remind me how palpable sadness and tragedy can be.

But I do love a good mystery. What happened to Amelia Earhart? Does the Loch Ness Monster exist? Did a college classmate (who’s sure the 1969 moon landing was staged) really encounter Bigfoot on a camping trek to Oregon?

From Murphy to Manteo, North Carolina mysteries and legends thrive. Growing up, I heard of a spot in a Chatham County forest: the Devil’s Tramping Ground, a 40-foot ring where nothing has grown for a century and anything left in the ring disappears overnight. I haven’t visited and don’t plan to.

However, I am curious about mermaid sightings, again in Chatham County, where the Haw and Deep rivers merge to form the Cape Fear. An Irishman and Revolutionary War commander, Ambrose Ramsey, opened a tavern near the bonnie banks in the late 1700s. Chaps making their way home after the tavern closed claimed to see mermaids singing, laughing and splashing about off a river sandbar. Stories of sightings continued for more than a hundred years. When flooding destroyed the tavern, those stories disappeared as well.

Oddly, tales of mermaid revelry never originated with fellows headed to the tavern, just after leaving. Ale tales or actual sightings? Who knows? The famous and infamous, from Christopher Columbus to the pirate Blackbeard, reported seeing the mythical creatures at sea. By all accounts, whether far out in the Atlantic or on a Cape Fear sandbar, the encounters — sporadic and brief — were always friendly.

For many North Carolinians, no unsolved mystery has consumed our imaginations, from elementary school years through adulthood, like that of the Lost Colony. In 1587, 117 settlers arrived at Roanoke Island, hoping to establish the first English-speaking colony in the New World. Three years later, delayed because of England’s war with Spain, the colony’s leader, English governor John White, returned with supplies. The colonists were nowhere to be found. A rescue party saw the letters CRO carved into a tree, and later, CROATAN, whittled on a fencepost.

Perhaps Croatan, an island south of Roanoke, inhabited by a Native American tribe of the same name, became the colonists’ new home. Were the settlers welcomed by friendly natives, or was their presence a source of hostility? Were they abducted, killed? Or, did they live out their lives assimilated among the Croatan, or some other native tribe more inland? Did they marry, have children, merge the New World with the Old? In recent years, DNA from locals failed to produce evidence of descendants.

Bad weather forced John White to end his search, a search that failed to locate his daughter, son-in-law and granddaughter, Virginia Dare, the first English child born in this New World. With few clues and lots of bad luck, the lost colonists vanished from history. Archeologists and amateur sleuths continue to ponder the mystery and mystique of what really happened, what might have been.

My theory? Google “Hattadare Indian Nation,” found in my hometown of Bunnlevel. James Lowery, a kind gentleman, also known as Chief Little Beaver, posited that some of the colonists survived, including Virginia, and intermarried with his coastal Native American ancestors, hence the name “Hattadare.” Mystery solved. Or not. But it makes sense to me.

Come Oct. 31, trick-or-treaters of all ages will remind us how much some folks enjoy dressing up and being someone they’re not, especially when fiction, at least for one night, is far from reality. Some may wonder about mermaids or lost people and worlds. Others, like myself, will ponder another mystery, still unsolved — How did a headless horseman find his way through that dark Sleepy Hollow? A horse with a great sense of direction?

Happy All Hallows Eve!  PS

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

Southwords

Mark Twain and Me

A fascinating seat at the table

By Gayvin Powers

As far as American writers go, Mark Twain is as iconic as Halley’s comet. That’s why I jumped faster than Huckleberry Finn onto a river raft when given the opportunity to have dinner with this immortal being.

Now, I know that Mark Twain isn’t immortal. However, he certainly has been eternal for over a century due to his writing and for 63 years after that, thanks to Hal Holbrook, who created the touring show “Mark Twain Tonight!” before he hung up his white suit for good in 2017.

When I was an aspiring writer in my 20s and madly in love, my boyfriend was putting on “Mark Twain Tonight!” at Stanford University. From the moment Hal sauntered across the stage, I didn’t see him, I saw Twain. I was captivated as Twain came back to life with his white handlebar mustache and stylistic speech, monologuing about subjects of race and equality.

After the performance, a private dining table was set for us with a single yellow rose on it.

“Like my grandfather’s roses,” I thought, waiting for Hal to de-Twain himself. Throughout my life, my grandfather gave me roses from his garden when they were in season. When Hal arrived, he was looking like himself again and accompanied by a bald man with a serious face.

They were clearly not expecting company. Our first interactions could be described as excited on my part, and reserved and guarded on theirs.

Hal’s eyes looked tired, and I couldn’t blame him. He’d just given his Tony award-winning performance under the hot lights for two hours. The most relaxing thing he did on stage was sit in a winged back chair and smoke a cigar — he probably wanted more of that and a glass of whiskey. Instead, he got a plucky Gen-X-er who looked like apple pie but was more like a Red Bull.

I introduced myself. Hal was courteous while the short man grumbled his name.

“That’s my manager,” Hal said. They were quite a pair: Hal was tall with mischievous, curious eyes, and his manager was like a stout boxer.

The four of us ate steak and potatoes while Hal and I talked between bites. I wondered if he had been to the Clifford Powers’ grandchild training academy because every time I asked him a question, he asked one back. Growing up, I was accustomed to talking with my grandfather, which was more like an interview. Hal was just shy of achieving this level of interrogation.

“You enjoyed the show?” he asked me.

“It was amazing! How did you come up with the idea to perform Mark Twain?” I asked. He took a bite, letting the question hang in the air. “Did you write it too?” I added.

“Do your parents live near here?” he replied.

“No. My mother passed away a few years ago,” I said, fluttering my eyelashes to force the tears back down. “And I’m closer with my grandfather than my dad.”

“I was an actor,” he said, giving me the version that one gives a youngster. “I wanted to act. Making the show let me to do that.”

I found out later that Hal had invented his celebrated performance out of necessity. He was out of work, his wife had postpartum depression, his parents were gone, and he was alone. Prior to “Mark Twain Tonight!” he had never read any of Twain’s books. His manager recommended he create the one-man show, and Hal did it to feed his family.

Later he asked, “Did you know, Mark Twain created the Angel Fish and Aquarium Club for girls after his wife and daughter died?”

I had no idea. Hal clearly admired Twain. He shared how Samuel Clemens, Twain’s real name, went on tour when his fortune ran dry — even though he hated touring.

“So, both of you were on the road, leading similar lives,” I said.

“In a way.”

With the last of the crème brûlée devoured, Hal said, “You should take the rose.”

“Thank you,” I said. “I think you should have it.” He looked puzzled. “Then you can take it home to your wife, and she’ll know that you thought of her while you were on the road.”

As if seeing me for the first time, his eyes softened as he said, “Why, thank you. I’ll do that.”

He put the flower in his lapel.

“Gayvin, what do you want to do?” Hal asked me.

“I want to be a writer.”

“Then you need to write. Write your own material. Don’t wait for someone else.”

With that, he gave me a hug goodbye, and for a brief moment I felt like one of Twain’s Angel Fish.  PS

Gayvin Powers is author of The Adventure of Iona Fay series and writing coach at Soul Sisters Write. She can be reached at hello@gayvinpowers.com.

 

Southwords

Mama’s Cookin’

Sweet memories of the most creative home chef who ever lived

By David C. Bailey

I was 16 by the time I appreciated what an incredible cook my mother was — thanks to the woman who would become my own personal chef.

“Duck sandwiches?” Anne responded incredulously when I told her what we were having for our picnic lunch, which also happened to be our first date.

“Yeah, and deviled eggs with watermelon-rind pickles and Mom’s chocolate chess pie for dessert,” I went on. In truth, I worried the repast might be a bit scant. Mom often fried chicken for picnics and packed her signature country ham biscuits, plus, if you were really lucky, homemade pimiento cheese sandwiches. Not to worry. My mother’s sister, Rachel, had also packed a picnic for our double-date, my cousin Bill and his girlfriend, Mary. She’d rustled up some of her tangy sweet-and-sour German potato salad laced with smoked side meat. Like Mom, Rachel blended lessons learned from her Pennsylvania Dutch upbringing with what she knew we Southerners loved. Add some of her simple but simply delicious sugar cookies, and our picnic made a pretty decent feed. (And yet, I remember the sweetest treat of all was that kiss I stole underneath the cotton blanket we tented over our heads against the rain.)

I now realize that my mother — and excuse me for expressing what may be a painful truth to you — was a way better cook than anyone else’s.

Look back on your own youth. Did your mom ever cook you duck à l’orange or Indian curry served with homemade chutney? OK, so maybe she did, but was she also able to Southern-fry chicken so crisp that it was a shame to smother it in milk gravy? And did your mom also wrap quail in bacon and stuff them with chestnuts and mushrooms? Was every single meal she served accompanied by some form of hot bread, plus a homemade dessert? Did you — and do you still — regularly dream about your mom’s cooking?

Other cooks may shine at the holidays — and Mother’s sweet potatoes with black walnuts, her shoo-fly pie and her whole baked country ham or goose were by no means shabby. But what my mother excelled at was cooking every dish day-after-day with the utmost creativity and care. Greek meatloaf she’d seen in a magazine. Deep-fat-fried zucchini or okra. Exotic specialties like borscht that she’d plucked from her beloved 12-volume Woman’s Day Encyclopedia (a set I still cherish and use frequently).

As my wife once remarked with amazement after experiencing a typical fresh-from-the-garden summer lunch of freshly picked corn on the cob, green beans tangled with bacon, fresh sliced tomatoes, cracklin’ cornbread, plus some leftover pork chops, “Every meal at your house is an event.”

My parents were foodies way before that word had any currency. My cousins would come and peer in wonder into our cupboard containing olives, pâté, anchovies, capers, four or five types of mustard, even caviar on occasion. Dad was a Belk store manager who traveled to New York City regularly and brought home shopping bags of pastrami, pickles and smoked fish, along with epic tales of lobster dinners and elaborate, multicourse Chinese feasts, which Mom would replicate, like his favorite, angels-on-horseback (oysters wrapped with bacon and broiled with onions and hoisin sauce). She fully embraced the ’50s hot trend of cooking what was then termed international or gourmet food, but she never abandoned the comfort food she — and Daddy — grew up eating on the farms they were raised on during the Depression — chicken-fried steak, sauerbraten, buckwheat cakes, chicken and dumplings, cider-braised rabbit and apples, all served with a heaping helping of their tradition, passed on from her mother and grandmother.

But her real creativity came into play with leftovers. As she would be piling bowls from the fridge onto the counter, my sister would say, “Uh oh, time for must-go soup.” Quoting my grandmother, Mom would counter,  “Better bad belly burst than good food waste.” Roast beef hash. Spicy gumbo from leftover okra and other vegetables. Stuffed baked potatoes or green peppers. And her pièce de résistance: schnitz un knepp from leftover ham paired with apples and dumplings.

Mom was not a demonstrative person. She wasn’t huggy, and even her filial kisses might be termed polite and correct. She said, “I love you” to each of us regularly, but with just a tad of awkwardness. This despite the fact that she was a hopeless romantic who gobbled up Hemingway, Fitzgerald and massive Russian novels one after another.

Dad would finish his favorite dessert, mopping up one of Mom’s fluffy biscuits in a slurry of molasses, give a satisfied groan, push his chair away from the table and say, “Aren’t we glad we married her,” maybe the most affectionate thing I ever heard him say to Mom.

“Nothing says lovin’ like something from the oven,” the Pillsbury Doughboy used to say, and Mom’s cooking said it best.  PS

O.Henry’s Contributing Editor David Claude Bailey learned to cook late in life at Print Works Bistro after working his way up from dishwasher to backline chef.

Southwords

Father’s Day

A note for a quiet man

By Jim Moriarty

Traditionally, the U.S. Open is designed to finish on Father’s Day, and since I covered golf, I was always in Pennsylvania or California or New York or somewhere other than home on that particular Sunday. The occasion, for me, was a string of construction paper cards drawn by little hands and a package or two tucked into a suitcase.

Having grown up in a household with two brothers and a single mother who was tougher than beef jerky, that particular day had never been circled on our kitchen calendar anyway. That doesn’t mean I didn’t feel the tug when Rory McIlroy came walking down the hill on the 18th hole of Congressional Country Club on a stroll to a championship, scanning the crowd, joyously looking for one face and one face alone, his dad’s.

I married into a family of five children, two girls on either side of a boy stuck in the middle. One summer a bunch of us — not all, but more than a quorum — came together for a week at a beach house. In the evening we’d sit on the deck with a cold beer in our hands, stare at the Atlantic and talk about pretty much anything that popped into our heads. I mentioned the beer, didn’t I?

We got to talking about fathers because, by then, we all were, and somehow or other I got to talking about my wife’s father.

He’d grown up on a dairy farm, and when high school kids would come around to date his daughters, they’d sometimes ask him how he got those big forearms, and he’d just look at them and hold out two big fists and start to move them up and down like he was milking an invisible cow suspended in the air.

He was in the Navy in World War II and served on a ship in the Pacific. When his ship was anchored off New Zealand and the crew got liberty, he stayed on board because he was the only sailor who knew how to weld, and there were repairs that needed doing. For him, the war was more like Mr. Roberts than PT-109. He never made any more — or any less — of it than what it was. His country needed him. He served.

He worked heavy construction most of his life. He knew where every sewer and water line was in the city where he grew up and where his children grew up. If someone needed to find out where a line ran and what the hell it tied into, the first stop wasn’t to the office of the city engineer; they came to him. After decades of climbing in and out of ditches, his knees don’t work so well now, but if he walked out into his backyard and whistled, a backhoe would probably show up.

He built his house with his own hands. Big and thick, they feel more of the past now than they do the present. He sent five children to college, four of them girls, when there were plenty of folks he grew up around who thought that spending a lot of money educating a girl was a waste. He got teachers and librarians and engineers out of it.

Rain or shine, in the winter cold or the summer heat, he went to a job every day that he didn’t much like, but he went because there were people who depended on him. Black or white, if you worked hard and were honest, you were welcome in his living room. When his wife, the partner of a lifetime, got Alzheimer’s, she couldn’t recognize him but he never stopped seeing her.

And, it has occurred to me, after all these years, that he’s as much a father as I’ve ever had and that, profoundly late though it may be, I don’t think I’ve ever told him how much I love him.

Happy Father’s Day, Don. I wish it was on a hand-drawn card.  PS

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

Southwords

Reprieve at the Ryder Cup

When a hug is worth a thousand words

By Jim Moriarty

When the United States
Senior Women’s Open begins at Pine Needles Lodge & Golf Club this month, I’m going to be pulling hard for Helen Alfredsson. The Swedish star has had a stellar LPGA career statistically similar to our local major champion, Donna Andrews. In fact, Alfredsson was the defending champion in the Nabisco Dinah Shore the year Andrews won it. Reporters aren’t supposed to have a rooting interest in such things, but I do. And there’s a reason why.

Eons ago I was taking Alfredsson’s portrait for Golf Digest. In those days Helen had a reputation for running hot on the golf course. She was also into yoga. The conceit of the photograph was simple enough. She was to pose seated on a box draped in black cloth against a black background. With the help of a couple of clear tubes, some talcum powder and a bit of forced air, Alfredsson would appear to be floating in air, sitting in the lotus position in peaceful meditation, with smoke coming out of her ears. What could go wrong?

Me.

What started innocently enough turned out to be, without exception, the worst day of my 35 years in golf.

In order to make the photo look just right, it was necessary to hide the plastic tubes behind Helen’s ears. For some reason, I lit on the notion of Silly Putty. (Moms and dads, don’t try this at home.) I tested it on myself. Put a wad behind each ear. Anchored the tubes. Squeezed the talcum powder. Voilá. It worked.

I rented a conference room. Got all set up. Helen arrived. She got in position. I secured the tubes behind her ears, hidden in her lovely, long, strawberry blonde hair. As it turned out, there was one little problem I hadn’t taken into account. The warmth of her skin and the heat of the modeling lights melted the Silly Putty. It oozed into that gorgeous hair. There was no getting it out. The picture was terrific. Helen, not so much. When it became apparent what I’d done, I turned as pale as skim milk. She left in tears.

We called the Silly Putty company and asked them what to do. Surely, rubbing alcohol or hydrogen peroxide, something, would get the damn stuff out. Nope, they said. The only thing you can do is cut it out. Oh, and they advised against doing it in the first place.

Now, you can’t write about golfers for 35 years without pissing off a few, but I’d never, ever, physically harmed one before. Awful doesn’t begin to describe how terrible I felt. The magazine sent her flowers. I sent her flowers. We offered to pay for a hairstylist. I wrote her a letter apologizing. No matter. Given what I’d so foolishly done, any gesture seemed woefully inadequate.

Well, months passed, maybe a year or two, before I saw Helen again. It was at the Ryder Cup at The Country Club.  I was in Boston taking pictures for Golf Digest. Unknown to me, Helen was also there doing color commentary — if memory serves — for Swedish radio. The media center was located in the curling rink. It was early in the week. I was coming out of the building and who should I see walking straight toward me but Helen Alfredsson.

I looked at her. She looked me. I didn’t know if she’d cuss me or walk right past me, but I knew I had to say something to her.

Before I could get a single word out of my mouth, Helen came straight up, threw her arms around me and gave me a big hug.

Since that moment, Helen Alfredsson has been my all-time favorite professional golfer. There isn’t even a close second.  PS

Southwords

Georgia on My Mind

Fond flashbacks from Augusta

By Jim Moriarty

In April, every golfer’s fancy turns to the Masters. In 1979 Fuzzy Zoeller and I were both rookies. Fuzzy won the Masters. I got to meet Dan Jenkins. The late, legendary Jenkins, hisownself, spent well over a year of his 90, in Augusta, Georgia, one week at a time, writing about everyone from Ben Hogan to Jordan Spieth.

Dan’s Mount Everest of attendance is well beyond anything I could contemplate but I was there for some big moments: Jack Nicklaus in ’86; Ben Crenshaw in ’95; all of Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson. Toss in a Ballesteros, a Spieth and a Faldo or two and it was a good run. As precious as those memories are, there is something equally satisfying about the little moments, away from the fist pumping and Mickelson jumping.

There was no microphone to record Justin Leonard on the par 5 second hole — the exact year escapes me — when he went for the back left pin placement in two, landed on the green and watched as his ball finished up on the embankment among the patrons, Augusta’s oh so civilized word for badge-wielding spectator. When a ball skitters in amongst the punters at the Masters everyone knows exactly what to do. They stand, fold their chairs ever so politely and back away to form a perfect semi-circle around the player, ball and caddie.

When the pin is in the back left on the second green at Augusta National, being on the bank behind and above it is about as appetizing a spot as being in the starting gate at the top of an Olympic ski jump. If Leonard’s chip didn’t hit the pin and go in the hole it was destined to race all the way down the green, maybe off it entirely. He might as well have been Galileo trying to get his head around the effect of gravity on a free falling object.

The couple nearest Justin was an elderly man and, presumably, his wife. The gentleman had the mien of a British colonel of the 1st Bombay Grenadiers recently returned from the Second Opium War, who just happened to be married to Scarlett O’Hara. They stood at attention, more or less directly behind Leonard’s ball, clutching their folding metal and canvas chairs to their chests like gladiator shields.

As Justin and his caddie were discussing his dismal prospects, the elderly gent turned to his wife and whispered in a voice — as elderly gents are sometimes wont to do — that was a notch or two or three above your garden-variety whisper. “This is a very difficult shot,” he cautioned Scarlett.

Justin turned his head ever so slightly in their direction and, in a pitch perfect whisper of his own, said to the colonel and his wife, “I know.”

Then, there was 1987. That was the year Seve Ballesteros, Greg Norman and Larry Mize went into sudden death as a threesome. Ballesteros dropped out on the 10th hole, the first in the playoff, when he three-putted from the back fringe and trudged up the steep hill to the clubhouse, an inconsolable figure. Norman and Mize advanced to the 11th where Mize missed the green miles right with a hopelessly awful second while Norman safely found the right edge of the green, being careful not to flirt with the pond. It looked as though Greg was about to slay the white whale of his green jacket. But, as Norman later said of Mize’s position, “I didn’t think Larry would get down in two . . . and I was right.”

Having a penchant during my photography career for finding myself consistently in the wrong place at the right time, I was positioned not down with my compatriots in the photo stand but further up the hill on the side of the 11th fairway. Folks aren’t supposed to get inside the ropes at the Masters but, with a wary eye for Pinkertons and green jacketed members, I inched my way underneath, trying to be as inconspicuous as someone who’d been running around all day and no doubt smelled like a musk ox could be. Who should I pop out next to but Larry Mize’s wife, Bonnie, and their one-year-old son, David.

With Norman standing next to the green looking on, Mize — the hometown boy — prepared to play his nearly impossible pitch. All of Amen Corner went as quiet as a mausoleum. CBS even hushed up the fake bird noises. Well, it seemed that quiet. Mize, of course, pitched the ball into the hole from a spot that looked to be about halfway to the Bojangles on Washington Road and commenced to leaping and running about, all of which I missed.

When the ball went in, the valley exploded.  Shocked and scared by the sudden noise, David began to wail. Bonnie, held him close, rocked him back and forth and said, “It’s OK. It’s OK. It’s just daddy.”

I wouldn’t have traded places with anyone for all the pictures in the world.  PS