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

Southwords

PSD

Poor squirrel decision

By Beth MacDonald

My neighbor across the street is a pleasant woman, friendly, funny, the likeable sort you’d want to have as a neighbor. Her husband went away on a business trip, so she was going to take the kids to go see family for a few days. She asked me to grab her mail and packages while she was gone. My husband parked his truck in her driveway to make it look like someone was home. The day she got back, I didn’t expect to look out my kitchen window and see her storming, angrily, toward my house. I went outside to greet her, but before I could say anything, she screamed, “Something trashed my house!”

“Let me get my shoes.” Maybe some of those slip-on footies the Terminix man wears when he comes in the house. And, of course, my phone. For posterity.

It was a “squirrelapocalypse.” I stood there with my mouth open, taking in the destruction. Every single windowsill on the first floor was chewed up — not just a little, almost clean though. The teeth marks stretched edge-to-edge like it was eating corn on the cob. There were bloody paw prints and droppings from the terrified creature everywhere, windows, the sofa, the blinds. Table lamps were turned over, smashed on the floor. I felt like a detective in CSI-Woodland Creature Edition. This squirrel knew how to party.

We looked all over for the dear departed, but came up empty so we began to clean up. She ordered a pizza. I went home and a few minutes later got a videotext message with the words, “What the bleep do I do now?” In the video, a squirrel was trapped in her fireplace, caged by the screen.

Naturally, I sent my husband over. 

Mason was only too happy to help. His friend Win, who was over for dinner, eagerly begged to go, too. Hemingway didn’t fancy a bullfight this much. The two men took a large Tupperware storage container from the basement and proceeded across the street like giddy children. I hollered after them to take video. This reeked of viral potential. The pizza delivery lady met them in the driveway.

“There’s a squirrel in there,” they warned her.

“They love peanut butter,” she said. “Make it a sandwich.”

Mason and Win cocked their heads and thanked her. They knew good advice when they heard it.

As they prepared to enter the house, the pizza lady drove off screaming out her car window, “CRUNCHY, SQUIRRELS LOVE CRUNCHY!”

Armed with this knowledge, they entered my neighbor’s house. They put a peanut butter sandwich in the Tupperware bin and tried to lure the squirrel into it. The rodent took the bait, literally, and scooted back up the chimney.

Plan B.

Mason came back to our house to grab a wire dog crate and a Duraflame log. I didn’t want to know the new plan.

Back at ground zero, the men set a fire, and placed the crate so they would catch the fleeing rodent, no doubt coughing and wheezing. Smoking the culprit out worked too well. Rather than depriving it of air, they filled it with adrenaline. The squirrel shot into the crate, with the sandwich, out the back of the crate, and into the kitchen presumably on a quest for a crunchier variety of peanut butter.

Screams could be heard for miles.

My neighbor started tossing her kids out of the house like luggage, except for the one clapping. That one wanted to stay.

“Fine! You can get rabies. I’m saving the others.” She no longer cared. With three  children saved, she was in good shape. She could spare one.

The guys were now trying to trap the terrified squirrel raging through the kitchen. Now would be a good time to describe a small, well-appointed kitchen, with two men, both bodybuilders, one standing 6-feet-2-inches and one 6-feet-6-inches, knocking everything over, doing a great deal more damage than the squirrel, who stood 10 inches tall, tail not included, and never lifted anything heavier than a crunchy peanut butter sandwich.

Finally, the two managed to get the squirrel into the Tupperware container and close the lid. The plan was to bring it outside. My neighbor wanted it exiled.

They took it down the street to the yard of another neighbor, who appeared to have picked the wrong time to go to the grocery store. As soon as the lid opened the squirrel, shot out like it was in a potato cannon.

“He’s your problem now!” Win shouted to no one on the other side of the fence.

“Did you take video?” I asked.

“No. Even if we did it would look like the Blair Witch Project but with a squirrel.”

It would have killed at the Sundance.  PS

Beth MacDonald is a Southern Pines suburban misadventurer who likes to make words up. She loves to travel with her family and read everything she can.

Southwords

Be My Valentine ‒ for Life

You may get a good laugh out of it

By Susan S. Kelly

I don’t know how you’re spending Valentine’s Day, but if you’re feeling blue, hie yourself to the Harris Teeter around 5 p.m. and hang out around the flower counter. Just watching the clerks pumping out last-minute arrangements for all those lost men scrambling to purchase posies is bound to make you laugh. If that fails, call a single friend to regale you with fun facts about dating after 40. A favorite is my pal who has a “guillotine realization” for blind dates. As in, “He was wearing a necklace.” Chop. Another has a Jesus clause in her marriage: If he ever gets religion, she’s excused. And for those of you eyeing that 10-years-younger mate, remember this: You’ll have to take on all their 10-years-younger enthusiasms too, for organic food and exhaustively researching kindergartens. Ugh. Makes reaching the point in a marriage where you get up every morning, ask each other how you slept, and actually answer each other seem far preferable.

Valentine’s is an industry now, but then so are weddings, and if you don’t believe me, ask my friend who went around at his daughter’s reception offering $20 bills to people if they’d just go home. Now, even “the ask” is elaborately planned for some mountain top or sunset beach scenario. As opposed to, say, the way my husband asked me to marry him, in the parking lot of the SAE house, where we’d gone with the rest of a frat friend’s reception carousers because we’d broken every glass at Hope Valley Country Club in Durham. It just doesn’t get any more romantic than that, unless you count my son’s friend who let everyone know he’d gotten engaged by sending a mass email with “Man Overboard” in the subject line. My husband and I — well, OK, my mother — set my wedding date depending not on weather or venue availability, but by asking the folks at Tiffany’s how long it would take to get the invitations printed and counting backward from there. My sister was so jealous of my getting married. She said, “Just think. Now you can do anything to your hair and he still has to love you.”

And then, happily ever after. Or as my other sister put it, “I’ve loved him ever since he had that awful The Price Is Right furniture.” Forty years on, I’m still wondering if I get marital points for putting on mascara for my husband just for dinner. But I gave up on wishing for a What Now? day many anniversaries ago. A What Now? day is a Saturday when your husband just follows you around all day and says, “What needs doing now?” Although I once read the lips of a new bride dancing that first dance with her new husband. “Turn me now,” she instructed him. Wonder how that’s going.

Ah, the nuptial valleys and peaks. Not the toothpaste caps, or shirts put inside out in the laundry basket, rather, the day my father came home for lunch, as he did every day, and it wasn’t ready.  “What have you been doing all morning?” he asked my mother. For the first and last time, I bet. Or my sister, who once proclaimed, “All we talk about are calendars.” Yes, at one stage, marital conversation gets pared down to timetables.

And while toothpaste tops may be a cliché, the bathroom does seem to be the locale for many a Grrr moment. Take this direct quote from an email: “This amazes me. We’ve had the rug on our bathroom floor for 10 years. D (name withheld to protect the guilty) steps on it when he gets out of the shower, stands on it while brushing his teeth, ponders on it while on the commode. Today when I asked him to bring the rug up from the dryer, he asked what bathroom it belonged in.”

Still, the bathroom moment I recall most fondly took place not in a bathroom, but in an aisle at Lowe’s. It’s a weeknight in a nearly vacant, fluorescently lit, concrete-floored, utterly charmless big box store. My husband and I are debating a new shower door for a bathroom renovation. Most decisions are easy: a towel bar on the outside, a grab bar on the inside. Small house and aging issues we’re used to, and don’t even blink.

We look at those doors a long time, slide them back and forth, compare, dither.  I’m leaning toward the clear, see-through panel — contemporary, clean, trendy — and a significant departure from our old frosted one. My husband nods, thinks, and finally says, “You know, I just don’t think I can go there.” 

I laugh. “Who do you think is going to be looking at us besides each other?”

He laughs too, then, admitting to an idiotic objection, after 28 years. Never mind that both of us had nine years of two to four roommates before we got married, and have experienced countless shared-bathrooms oops moments on family vacations.

But then, I lift my shoulders and say, “You know, I can’t go there, either.”

And there, in the middle of Lowe’s, on a weekday evening, under fluorescent lights, the pair of us double over, giggling at our ridiculous, bogus-modest, long-married selves. If that ain’t the essence of romance, I don’t know what is.

And they’ve lived happily ever after. With the clear shower door.  PS

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

Southwords

Puppy Prison

Life on the night shift

By Beth MacDonald

My husband, Mason, volunteered to build a new shelter for animals at a county facility occupied by a particularly adorable, needy shepherd mix. Every day he’d show up, “Adorable” would playfully beg him for attention. He sent pictures via text message to our daughter and me that, when opened, played that Sarah McLaughlin song “In the Arms of the Angels.” Our daughter took one look and said, “Bleeding hearts unite!” I wanted to know more.

Her adoption ad read like this: “This cutie-pie loves long walks, playing tug of war, ‘Dungeons & Dragons,’ and other games like ‘Drop My Shoe.’ She eats everything she sees; rocks are her favorite snack. She’s definitely the type of dog that will get her head stuck in a banister. Her best friends are the worms and parasites that infest her. Her favorite color is white to match the contamination suits you’ll be getting if you take this lovable, good-natured heartbreaker home!”

Welcome to the family!

The newest member of the Mac Pack needed a name. We figured we’d wait a few days to see what her personality was like, and how she interacted with our other dogs, before committing to some boring name that had to do with her coloring. The first few hours alone with her produced some good front-runners such as Nononononooooo, Wheresmyshoe, and Yougottapeeoutside (which sounds French if you say it fast with the accent on the last two syllables). By our second visit to the vet for her bi-weekly checkup, I was so exhausted from “puppy watch” that when they asked to confirm her coloring was black and tan I said, “Yes, please. And hurry.” I thought they were offering me a drink. We almost named her Stout.

Like our other two dogs, we decided to crate train her to help with housebreaking. The older dogs have been out of their crates and managing the house for years. They do most of the cooking, cleaning and handle the bills, thanks to the trusty crate. House training the first week became “a thing,” as Mason says. We all agreed to shifts watching the dog — actively, not passively — to keep the house and yard clean, given her best friend infestation. I had first shift; Mason took the late shift.

The first night in her crate the puppy sang the song of its people all night long. We tried our best to ignore it, but even our oldest dog barked a harsh, “Silence! We sleep at night!” a few times. At 3:33 a.m. (I checked the clock to validate my self-pity), I gave up and let her out. She wasn’t interested in going to the bathroom outside. She much preferred the hardwood floor toilet. I took her outside anyway, but she only wanted to play with all the horrors lurking in the dark. Great! Me too!

I started brewing my coffee once I got back inside. I was up for the day. My oldest dog sat at my feet and asked for a light roast. Before 5:00 a.m. we covered several training modules such as “Appropriate Chew Toy Replacement,” “The Meaning of the Word No,” “No Means No,” “No Really Means No,” “Down,” “Drop My Shoe,” “How About You Eat Dad’s Camouflage Crocs,” “How to Properly Disinfect a House Before Consuming Coffee,” “Land Navigation for Dog Poo Deep in the Bushes Sans Flashlight,” and we completed 30 minutes of cardio doing laps around the living and dining rooms trying to get my shoes back.

By the end of the first week we realized we were just night shift jailhouse guards. The puppy had begun her set of auditions for her career as a blues singer the minute we put her to bed. The oldest dog asked me to put on some PBS programming to drown her out until her voice coach could get her on par with Etta James. I started to Google life hacks for keeping your eyes open when sleep deprived. Mason chimed in with his Ranger school advice and suggested a Copenhagen dip or toothpicks in my eyelids.

After a few weeks she settled into a nightly routine doing a 30-minute set of her favorite prison songs before finally letting us sleep. Most days she was up by 3:30 a.m. trying for her own Shawshank Redemption. After removing a poster of Raquel Welch and a worn-out bone fashioned into a hammer, I began the shuffle to get her outside before she had an accident. One night it was raining. I put her down, looked at the sky, and wondered whether the real Andy Dufresne was Tim Robbins or me  and when I’d be free from the first shift.  PS

Beth MacDonald is a Southern Pines suburban misadventurer who likes to make words up. She loves to travel with her family and read everything she can.

Southwords

Holiday Fantasies

Get on board or get out of the way

By Susan S. Kelly

My mother was having a Christmas cull one year and asked if I wanted the toilet lid cover. As one does.

This piece of church bazaar finery was my first claim as a child when the box of decorations came out every Christmas: a forest green, glitter-glued felt oval adorned with a ho-ho-hoing Santa face of pink, white and red felt with sequin eyes, a tufted cotton beard, and a clever drawstring to tighten the cover just so around the commode lid. I thought it was divine. I have it still, the outlined shapes of eyebrows becoming visible as it disintegrates, revealing the crafts-by-numbers kit it originally was. In the attic, Santa’s slowly getting de-flocked and de-felted somewhere under the Advent wreath candles that became a waxy purple unicandle during the 100-degree days of August.

The good news about Christmas, besides the obvious Good News, is that tastemakers and arbiters of Tacky are banished, or at the very least, muffled. That’s the bad news as well. Everyone is permitted his or her holiday indulgences and eccentricities. Last year my neighbor had an egg-shaped wreath on her door, and I have no idea whether it was accidental or intentional.

Flannery O’Connor famously said of William Faulkner, “Nobody wants his mule and wagon stalled on the same track the Dixie Limited is roaring down.” This sentiment applies to Christmas as well. Either get with it, or get mowed over by it. But we can agree on this sentiment: Without women, there would be no Christmas as we know it. Females are out there in the trenches, responsible for every holiday fantasy promulgated in mags and ads — caroling, cookies, gingerbread houses, the works. “I see more of the Salvation Army ringers than I do my husband,” a friend once remarked to me. Another friend drew the line in the sand, er, carpet. “I shopped, wrapped, mailed, decorated, planned, cooked, cleaned and organized,” she told her husband and two sons. “You guys have to take down the tree.” They took down the tree all right. They took it down at Easter. Another friend buys herself an additional piece of her Christmas china every time her ex-husband mentions his new wife’s name in her presence.  I suspect she’s on finger bowls by now.

As for that gingerbread house fantasy, here’s what I have to say about doing that with your children: Go for the pre-fab kits. I actually made gingerbread from scratch, spread it thinly on parchment-paper-lined baking trays, then cut it into wall shapes. Like many activities, it was cuter in the planning than the execution, never mind unappreciated. I’m still digging peppermint candy slivers out of the kitchen heating vents. Instead, keep an illustrated Hansel and Gretel book, complete with candy-covered fantasy gingerbread house, on the coffee table along with ’Twas the Night Before Christmas. Point out what really happens to bad little boys and girls, not getting switches in stockings.

I don’t understand the Fairness Doctrine of today, when couples routinely alternate Christmas between families. I get Christmas Eve, you get Christmas morning, they get Christmas Day dinner . . . logistics alone are on a par with the Normandy invasion, not to mention the emotions, prompting my next-door neighbor to wryly refer to the comings, goings and schedules as “the prisoner exchange.” To counter this trend, I had a third child after two boys — fully aware that the baby would likely be another boy — just to increase the odds that someone, someone, would come home to me at Christmas. Still, the in-laws have a powerful draw, in part because my sister-in-law concocts eggnog with five kinds of liquor, which she totes around during the holidays in a wheeled cooler. I don’t mean that the cooler holds containers of eggnog. I mean that the cooler actually holds the eggnog itself, sloshing around. Open the lid, and enticing clumps of a substance I’m afraid to ask about — Ice cream? Whipped cream? Egg whites? Butter? — float whitely on the surface. Five kinds of liquor soften, not to mention blur, the blow of absent family. And it was my mother-in-law who taught me the value of smilax at Christmas. I wrap the supple stems all through my (so-called) chandelier, and suspend papier-mâché angels from that green and leafy heaven. Ivy will not do that for you. I’ve also nurtured two smilax shrubs for years, for no other reason than to use their bright berries at Christmas, and have concluded I have two males or gender-neutral plants. Whatever their sexual preferences, they aren’t producing and I’m still using fake red berries.

Still, if I haven’t been able to fulfill every Christmas fantasy, I’ve managed to produce a few of the Christmas food fantasies out there. Clove-studded oranges: Check. Apples dipped in egg whites, then coated with granulated sugar so they appear to glisten: Check. On my friend Ginny’s birthdays, her mother would hand her some cash and say, “Run uptown and buy yourself a bathing suit for your birthday.” It’s not surprising, then, that Ginny’s ongoing fantasy for her own daughter was that she’d dash downstairs on Christmas morning, see wall-to-wall presents, and fall over in a dead faint at Santa’s largesse. If this is your fantasy, point your compass toward the North Pole of IKEA. Last I checked, a cloth tepee that covers 10 square feet of living room space was $5.99. Same for the fabric playhouse you drape over a card table. Never mind their two-hour shelf life; they come in desert browns and beiges, and jungle browns and greens. Because nothing says Christmas like camo.  PS

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