Month: February 2017

Sunday Man

’twixt Heaven and Earth

By Jim Dodson

Itís Sunday morning in the kitchen, two hours before the sunrise.

A welcome silence fills the house, and at this hour I often hear a still, small voice that may indeed belong to God but is more often than not the mewing of young Boo Radley, eager to be let out in order to roam the neighboring yards.

On the other side of the door sits old Rufus, balancing a universe, home from his nighttime prowlings, the crankiest cat of the known world, complaining to be let in and fed. The noisy one comes in, the quiet one slips out.

I am a butler to cats.

On the plus side, Sunday morning lies like a starry quilt over the neighborhood at this hour. A thin quarter moon hangs on the western horizon like a paper moon in a school play and Venus shines like a jewel in an Ethiop’s ear. Somewhere, miles away, a train rumbles by, a reminder of a world that is always going somewhere. But luckily I am here on Earth, a Sunday man beneath a hooked moon, for the moment going nowhere except the end of his driveway to fetch the Sunday paper for reading over the week.

Back inside, I sit for spell with my first coffee, reading one of what I call my Sunday morning books that run the gamut from the sonnets of Shakespeare to the essays of Wendell Berry, from Barbara Brown Taylor to Pierre Teilhard De Chardin — with a dash of Billy Collins and Mary Oliver for proper spiritual seasoning.

This particular Sunday is a gem long out of print, one man’s memoir of spiritual rejuvenation first published the year I was born, the story of a successful big-city writer who was forced by reasons of health and age to return to the small Wisconsin town of his birth. There he built a big house on ancestral land but initially struggled to find his place on the ground.

“A man, faced with the peculiar loneliness of where he doesn’t want to be,” writes Edward Harris Heth in My Life on Earth, “is apt to find himself driving along the narrow, twisting country roads, day or night, alone, brooding about the tricks life can play.”

Life is lived by degrees. Little by little, the author’s lonely drives along country roads yield a remarkable transformation of the angry city man. Heth gets to know — and admire — the eccentric carpenter who builds his house. He drops by a church supper and meets his neighbors, including the quirky Litten sisters “who play a mean game of canasta,” know all the village pump gossip “and have an Old Testament talent for disaster.” The ancient Litten girls both feed and inspire him to broader exploration.

His neighbor Bud Devere, a young and burly farmer who always shows up uninvited just to chat, insists that Heth see the Willow Road.

“I did not want to see what Bud saw. But the reluctance began fading away in me, that first time we went down the Willow Road. It covers scarcely more than a mile, but in that mile you can cover a thousand miles.” Traveling along it, the author sees spring wildflowers, undisturbed forests, a charming farmhouse with narcissus and hyacinth in bloom. He feels his pulse slow, and something akin to simple pleasure takes root.

“Bud kept silent. He wanted me to open my own eyes. . . . Since then, I’ve learned how many country people know and enjoy this art of the small scene and event, the birth of a calf, a remembered spot, the tumultuous labor and excitement of feeding the threshers, who come like locusts and swarm for a day over your farm and disappear again at night, the annual Welsh singing competition in the village — these are the great and proper events of a lifetime.”

Funny thing is, I have no idea how this little book, something of a surprise bestseller when it first appeared in 1953, got into my bookshelf, and now into my soul. It just magically appeared, a gift from the gods or perhaps a wise friend who knew I might discover it

Now the sun is up and so are the dogs. I am a butler to them, too. Despite a late frost, birds are singing and there is a new angle to the light — not to mention the first green tufts of daffodils rising like green fingers from the Earth.

Anticipating their Sunday walk, of course, the dogs think every day is the first day of spring. Mulligan, a black, flat-haired retriever I found as a pup a decade ago running wild along a busy highway, trots ahead off the lead, our tiny pack’s alpha girl, while Ajax — whom I call Junior — a golden retriever far too good-looking for his own good — lumbers along toting his own lead, deeply impressed with himself.

The neighborhood is old, with massive hardwoods arching like cathedral beams overhead. A man in his bathrobe steps out and shuffles hurriedly to the end of his sidewalk to fetch his Sunday morning paper. He gives a quick wave, bobbing a neighborly head, and hurries back inside to read.

The news of the world can wait. Because it never really changes, a story as old as cabbages and kings. Besides, we are briefly off the clock of the world all of Sunday, footloose upon the Earth, officially out of range, in search of an earthier divinity. Truthfully, I’m a bit sad to see winter’s cold and prospects of snow give way to the advance of daffodils. I am a winter’s boy, after all, but happy for a wife who is an endless summer girl dreaming of white lilacs in bloom.

“What is divinity,” asked Wallace Stevens in his lovely poem Sunday Morning

“if it can come

Only in silent shadows and in dreams?

Shall she not find in comforts of the sun,

In pungent fruit and bright, green wings, or else

In any balm or beauty of the earth,

Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven?

Divinity must live within herself:

Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow;

Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued

Elations when the forest blooms; gusty

Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights;

All pleasures and all pains, remembering

The bough of summer and the winter branch,

These are the measures destined for her soul.”

By the time we reach the park, Lady Summer Bough and Lord Winter Branch, the strengthening sun has melted away the year’s final frost. Across the way stands an ancient oak I peddled by a half a million times as a kid on his way to the ball field; it looks like a lighted candelabra, limned with golden morning sun.

Funny how I only recently noticed this.

It is middle Sunday morning at church, our usual pew back right. The young preacher is named Greg. Not long ago we attended his ordination as a priest. My cheeky wife thinks Greg is almost too good-looking to be a priest. Lots of women in the parish seem to share this view.

The gist of his Sunday sermon is the need to look with fresh eyes upon Matthew’s Beatitudes. But the true strength of his Sunday morning message lies in the suggestion that we all should aspire to become our true selves and Christian mystics: “Don’t be scared by that word mystic. It simply means someone who has gone from an intellectual belief system to actual inner experience.” The journey from head to the heart, Greg says, means we are called to be mystics — to chuck rules-based, belief-system Christianity in favor of something far more intimate and organic as the Earth around us.

To coax the point home, he mentions Franciscan friar Richard Rohr’s observation that religion is largely filled with people who are afraid of Hell, and spirituality is for people who have gone through hell.

And with spring on the Sunday doorstep, Father Greg provides the perfect metaphor directly from renewing nature — the mystery of how a caterpillar becomes a butterfly, how becoming our true selves is not unlike the chrysalis that must crack open in order for the butterfly’s wings to gain strength and allow it to fly.

“And as we struggle,” notes the bright new associate rector, “it breeds compassion within our hearts. Just as the butterfly pressed fluid into its wings, our struggle enables compassion to flow through our bodies, a compassion that allows us to empathize with the suffering of others.”

I’ll admit I am a Sunday man who digs a good sermon. And this was a mighty thoughtful one. Young Greg is off to an excellent start, even if — like Junior — he is a tad too good-looking.

Speaking of digging, after a Chicago-style hotdog, I’m home for full Sunday afternoon working in my new garden, digging in the soil and delving in the soul.

Having pulled down an old pergola and cleaned out a handsome brick planter long overgrown with ivy, I lose complete track of time in the backyard planting Blue Angel hostas and a pair of broadleaf hydrangeas, repairing and raising a much-loved birdfeeder, hanging chimes high in a red oak and transplanting ostrich ferns. If one is closer to God’s heart in a garden, then perhaps I am a backyard mystic with dirty hands.

By Sunday sundown, my knees are aching but the healing is real. Renewed for a week of cabbages and kings, we settle down with the Sunday paper and a bit of Netflix before bed, though I tend to doze off halfway through the program.

Old Rufus goes out; Boo Radley comes in. The dogs follow us to bed. For some reason I seem to sleep so well on Sunday nights.  OH

Contact Editor Jim Dodson at jim@thepilot.com

Almost Famous

Restoration Runway weaves
together fashion, healing and hope

A host of A-list celebrities will descend on the Greensboro Country Club, March 30, for the eighth annual Restoration Runway Fashion Show and Auction. Everyone from The Rock to Dolly Parton will sashay down the catwalk . . . Or, wait . . . Look closer . . . Is that really Dolly?

Turns out these “celebs” will be local lookalikes, donating their time to help out Restoration Place Counseling (RPC), a local faith-based nonprofit that, since 2005, has provided girls, women and couples with discounted counseling services. The runway show helps RPC to fund half of the 7,000 professional counseling sessions completed each year.

Your faithful scribe found last year’s event so inspiring, she’ll be back this year. So expect to see yours truly walking in the show (shhhh . . . it’s a secret!). The women involved have such amazing stories of courage and determination, it will be hard to contain my enthusiasm — or hold back the tears —at evening’s end, when, everyone is on their feet, singing, clapping and celebrating each other.

In addition to the catwalk, the event features a sprawling silent auction (including local artists’ wares, theater and dinner packages, and luxe furniture), plus heavy hors d’oeuvres and sparkling libations. On stage, models strike poses intermingled with other fun musical acts. There will even be an appearance by the King, himself — “Elvis Presley.”

For fashionistas, the event poses a double threat to the pocketbook, as they can not only bid on silent auction items, they can also make notes about which looks they like the best, and then go find them at the local boutiques lending the outfits. Wise spending, considering their hard-earned dollars support local businesses and a worthy cause, as Cindy Mondello, RPC founder and executive director points out.

“This event goes beyond one night,” she says. “It’s about the future of Restoration Place Counseling. It’s about the future of hundreds of girls and women finding hope and healing.”  OH

Follow the show on Facebook at www.facebook.com/restorationplacecounseling/ for up-to-the-minute updates and behind-the-scenes posts. There may even be a guess-the-celebrity contest for free tickets and prizes. For more information about the Restoration Runway event or to learn more about Restoration Place Counseling, visit www.rpcounseling.org.

— Waynette Goodson

Walker Avenue’s Colorful Thread

For its diverse denizens, a spark that begins over a wall of beer or
a ball of yarn inevitably ends with an enduring love affair of the heart

Story and Illustration by Robin Sutton Anders

Roger and Nancy Kimbrough can give you 1,600 good reasons why their customers drive from all over the country to shop at Bestway, the neighborhood grocery store they own on the corner of Walker and Elam — and they can all be found on one 80-foot-long “Wall of Beer.”

“We started with about 450 craft beers in our assortment in 2008,” remembers Roger Kimbrough. “People got so excited and asked if we could get this beer, or that beer.” Following customer requests, the Kimbroughs quickly doubled their inventory to 900. Today, they showcase all 1,600 options on a refrigerator wall organized by geography, eastern North Carolina on one end, California on the other. A vast selection of imports hailing from countries like the Netherlands and Thailand rest on nearby shelving.    

High praise from influential critics, such as BeerAdvocate.com and RateBeer.com attract out-of-staters who amend road trips to include a stop at the Walker Avenue institution. Once they shop The Wall and stuff their trunks full of small-batch, quaffable delicacies, they discover what the locals already know: Bestway stands in good company.

If you head over to Walker Avenue — the 2.4 mile stretch that starts on West Market Street, runs through the Lindley Park and Sunset Hills neighborhoods and dead-ends at UNCG’s towering Jackson Library — and ask any of the pedestrians what they’re up to, a good number of them are likely either coming from or making their way to “the corner.”

They’re referring to the intersection of Walker and Elam, where Bestway operates alongside a handful of Greensboro’s most popular bars and restaurants. The road crossing’s not much to look at. Most of the buildings are pretty old and much of the signage feels like your favorite well-worn old shirt — the colorful and tattered pieces are celebrated. Neighbors congregate on the concrete. Musicians settle in to liven the scene. Across the street, dudes high-five their way into Suds and Duds, the “Cheers” of the laundromat world. (A bar in the back with the basketball shooting game Hoop Fever and ten sports-dominated TVs give regulars a reason to collect their dirty socks.)

Right beside Suds, jukebox tunes (and the occasional live performer) from dive bars Wahoo’s and Walker’s filter into the street to mingle with the mix outside. Aromas of, arguably, Greensboro’s best pizza — dough prepared in-house with locally milled, organic flour and topped with fresh seasonal ingredients like Goat Lady chèvre and Bradd’s sweet Italian sausage — waft from
Sticks & Stones’ clay oven. Emma Key’s, a restored 1950s barber shop, serves up thick chocolate shakes and flat-top grilled burgers.

Just down the way, college kids and their out-of-town parents wait for a seat at Fishbones, which serves seafood entrees and inventive daily specials. And across the street, sounds of laughter burst from the back of Lindley Park Filling Station, a casual diner with great soups, salads and sandwiches — and a lush outdoor patio that’s a dream-come-true for neighborhood toddlers with the wiggles.

There’s something infectious about that corner. It draws people from all walks of life and celebrates the intersection of age, education, wealth and race. Neil Reitzel, owner of Fishbones and Sticks & Stones, caught the bug when he walked up to the corner for the first time as a 15-year-old visiting a girlfriend who lived in the neighborhood. “I fell in love with it then,” he remembers. “Lindley Park was so different from my neighborhood, where all the houses were kind of cookie-cutter. My friend and I would walk up to the corner and go to the Bestway, and it was like a throwback in time.”

As soon as he was old enough, Reitzel, along with a buddy, Scott Toben, bought the space between Fishbones and Bestway and opened the Blind Tiger pub, an instant success that soon welcomed acts such as Hootie and the Blowfish — “they played for a crowd of about thirty people,” Reitzel laughs — and Ben Folds Five, who made their musical debut there.

Today, with a business portfolio that includes two of Greensboro’s most successful restaurants, Reitzel continues to believe in the power of Walker Avenue. “I love the people and the diversity. I love the architecture of the houses. There’s so much I really dig about it.”

The corner may be the heart of Walker Avenue, but its strong, steady beat of community, diversity and inclusion reverberates east and west of the Elam intersection.

If you leave the Bestway and walk to your right for a half-mile or so, you’ll pass eclectic, craftsman-style bungalows and student apartments before you get to UNCG’s campus. If you instead walk left, more bungalows line the way to a bridge passing over Wendover; then the Greensboro Arboretum on your right; and eventually, Market Street.

It’s a colorful walk either way you turn. On any day, you’ll be treated to a visual arts display, courtesy of talented Walker residents who leave subtle front-lawn hints of their crafts (“hope” signs hand-painted on wooden clapboard; metallurgy, including an intricate sculpture of two kids sitting on a tree bench; music lessons; handcrafted Adirondack chairs). On Saturdays, the corner farmers’ market at Walker and Elam plays host to live music and vendors selling veggies, meat, fish, baked goods, and crafts. And seasonally, the arboretum’s trees and flowers update their botanical show.

One year ago, Walker’s local color landed on a not-so-subtle, unlikely canvas. Neighbors blanketed every square inch of the cold, steel bridge railings that cross over Wendover Avenue with colorful knitting. “I never liked that bridge,” says Kathy Newsome, who lives one street back from Walker and used to drive her kids to the arboretum so they wouldn’t have to ride their bikes over the bridge. “The railings are so low, it feels dangerous. But it still seemed silly to drive them in a car when the arboretum was really only a block from our house,” she says. “Plus, it was a real divider in our neighborhood.”

Lindley Park officially extends all the way down Walker Avenue and over the bridge to encompass the homes surrounding the arboretum. But, Newsome says, residents on the other side of the bridge didn’t feel as much a part of the neighborhood. “You’ll always hear people say, ‘I live in Lindley Park, but I live on the other side of the bridge.”

Newsome had an idea to erase the “but.”

“Nobody knew what a yarn bomb was,” she says. “Even the people from ‘Building Stronger Neighborhoods’ didn’t know, but they approved my grant. Suddenly I had to get it done in three months!”

Newsome set up a booth at the farmers’ market, complete with wicker chairs and baskets of yarn and knitting needles. “I told people that I’d teach them how to knit if they’d help me,” she says. Newsome figured she needed seventy-seven 7-foot-long scarves in order to completely wrap the railings of the bridge with colorful yarn. After three months, she and her cohorts had enough scarves to blanket not only the guardrails but also the trees on either side of the bridge.

“I initially wanted this to be a neighborhood connector, but it extended far beyond that,” she recalls. “People really got on board. In the knitting booth, I would teach one person to knit, and that person would teach the next person to come along. So we had 12-year-olds teaching 60-year-olds. In the end, 200 people volunteered their time to knit.”

After every color of the rainbow — and knitted letters spelling out “COMMUNITY” — warmed the once-chilly guardrails, Newsome loved to walk across her neighborhood bridge. “It was cold in November, but there were always people out there taking pictures and cars honking when they’d drive under it on Wendover,” she says. “Suddenly this yucky bridge that goes over six lanes of traffic was something to care about, something to notice.”

This spring, Walker Avenue’s bridge is getting a facelift in the form of higher, pedestrian-friendly railing. It’s all thanks to a vote from the district requesting a safer bridge for their community, for their children. “The reason people voted for it over other projects was because they were aware that there even was a bridge,” Newsome says. “They realized that bridge had value.”

Stich by stitch, Newsome’s project connected novices and apprentices, young and old, newcomers and old-timers, bringing her neighbors together. Stitch by stitch, her neighbors constructed a more inclusive, safer street.

That’s the kind of neighborhood Walker Avenue residents want — one that understands all neighborhoods are knit together and that in the very best neighborhoods, the entire community provides the yarn that binds. After all, it takes the whole palette to make a rainbow.   OH

Robin Sutton Anders is a Greensboro-based freelancer who is proud to call Lindley Park home.

Yelp!

Something to sink your teeth into

By Clyde Edgerton

I went to a new dentist last week. The old one recently retired. I sat in the waiting room reading a magazine until called into the room with the chair and drills. That room had new equipment and I noticed that the seat-chair-bed-thing that you sit on and that they lean you back in, felt very comfortable.

I needed a crown. The new dentist came in. The reason I was using a new dentist is that he took over the patients of my old one. 

Isn’t it funny what all we don’t check up on. You may be different but I ask friends about where to eat. I go online and check prices and comments about shoes I might buy. And in the store, I try on several pairs before buying. I go into Dick’s for a basketball and look at a whole rack with prices under each basketball and I pick up several and dribble them there in the store. Then I decide.

But I go to somebody who is going to operate on my head, inside my mouth with drills and needles and cement, and I don’t do research. Maybe you do. But somehow I’ve never shopped for a dentist. My mama took me to the first one and then that dentist retired and turned over his office to a distant cousin of mine — and I went to him because he was kin — and then he turned his office over to another dentist. I continued going to that one for years . . . 

Then I moved to Wilmington and I have no idea how I ended up with my first Wilmington dentist (15 years ago), since I didn’t inherit him. (I had no complaints.) And now, when that one retired, the office people didn’t change and I kind of knew them, and all of the sudden I was in the long, reclining seat when the new guy came in. I had no idea of whether or not he could tell a bicuspid from a bicycle. He looked to be about 12, 13 years old.

Things went fine. I liked him. He wore gloves with a grape smell. On purpose. Honest.

Another thing I’ve noticed is that people in our culture tend to be silent about the price of a dentist’s or doctor’s bill — when you pay, that is. If it’s your car and your oil has been changed and you’ve gotten a new battery, you say to the cashier, “How much?” and the cashier tells you and you pay. If it’s a doctor, the cashier says, “That’s a $30 or $70, or (now) $90 co-pay, please.” And you pay it. The end.

What I don’t say is, “How much was the total charge for today’s visit?” Maybe you do.

Actually, for a short while about three years ago, I did ask the receptionist/cashier about total bill numbers, and something like the following is what usually happened:

“That’s a $40 co-pay,” says the receptionist/cashier.

I reach for my billfold and say, “Can you tell me how much the bill is?”

“Forty dollars.”

“No, I mean for the entire visit. You know — the whole bill. I’m just curious.”

“For the entire visit?” she asks, looking up at me for the first time. She’s looking me in the eye.

“Yes, Please. Thank you.”

“Well, let’s see,” she says, and she looks down at the piece of white paper she’s about to file, having given me the yellow copy. I look at my copy. It has 200 tiny squares with something medical written in beside each, something like “Quadra florientine xerox procedure.”  Or “Hymiscus of the vertebrae test.” Of the 200, nine are checked off.

She goes to a closet and gets an adding machine, one like my father used to have in his grocery store in the ’50s. She brings it back out, places it on her desk, and puts the white piece of paper down beside it. “Hang on,” she says. “This might take a minute or two.” She turns to the computer while holding her finger on that first check in the top little block on the white piece of paper. With a mouse under the other hand, she finds what she’s looking for on the computer from a website and puts a number into the adding machine, and pulls the handle. She sound is sort of: Cha-chank.

“OK,” she says. “Let me see here.” She places a finger on the second check, finds a different website, and finds what she’s looking for. She puts a number into the adding machine. Cha-chank.

She makes a phone call and says, “Yes, I can wait.” In about two minutes she says, “Yes, can you give me the price of a crankshem rebotolin frisk? . . . . OK, thanks.” Cha-chank.

She’s back on the computer. This goes on for a while. Shadows, from sunlight coming through windows, lengthen across the room.

“Okey-doke,” she says. She tears off the strip of paper from the adding machine, pulls a curtain around her that hangs from a curved rod, looks over my shoulder, leans forward, looks left and right, circles the bottom number and places it up on the counter in front of me. $489.23.

I say, “Thank you very much.”

Now, I’m waiting for the day there is a co-pay on the co-pay. And that time is not far off, probably about the time my dentist turns 16 or 18.  OH

Clyde Edgerton is the author of 10 novels, a memoir and most recently,
Papadaddy’s Book for New Fathers. He is the Thomas S. Kenan III Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing at UNCW.

Best Foot Forward

The inspiration from wanderings, both lonely as a cloud and collective

It’s time to get outside. Go for a walk. The days are lengthening, the nights are warming and the lethargy of winter is peeling away to reveal a new spring in your step. We love to see people holding a book as they walk the trails of Bur-Mil or the sidewalks of Elm Street. To that end, we’ve included books on walking, marching, perambulating and traipsing.

“I believe walks are miracles — which can help me learn, like nothing else, about a nation or myself . . .” is Rory Stewart’s contention in The Marches: A Borderland Journey Between England and Scotland (Houghton Mifflin, 2016, $27). The book is a walking exploration that peels back the layers of history in the ancient land that has been inhabited by Picts, occupied by Romans, invaded by Vikings and still questions its national identity in the 21st century.

Walking, wandering and aimlessness figure prominently in Daniel Alarcón’s At Night We Walk in Circles (Riverhead Books, 2014, $16). A young actor in an unnamed Latin American country joins a ragtag guerrilla theater group comprised of older actors previously persecuted by the regime, now ready to take to the countryside with a new political play. In the course of the tour, a term we use lightly, in hillside and mountain towns where no one has seen theatre before, Nelson discovers a country that he never knew existed. Alternately magical and brutal, with a deep mystery at its core, Alarcón’s novel explores art, humanity and the persistence of not-knowing.

The modern naturalist and hiker’s next reading list should without question include Robert Moor’s On Trails: An Exploration (Simon & Schuster, 2016, $25). Framed loosely around his thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail but delving into topics from sheep herding in Arizona to fossilized trilobite tracks in Newfoundland, Canada, this book explores the world of footpaths across time and geography. Know that, much like the trails Moor treads throughout, the narrative often wanders, reading more like a book of essays than one continuous narrative, but for this subject matter the format somehow works. A great pick for fans of Annie Dillard and Bill Bryson,
On Trails will inform, surprise and give you the itch to hit the trail.

Congressman John Lewis is an authority on taking steps of a different sort. His three-volume graphic novel March (Topshelf, 2013–2016, $16), co-written with Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell, is based on his own life and includes important Civil Rights’ moments like the 1963 March on Washington and the 1965 Selma March. Walking has never been more necessary.

In her book Wanderlust: A History of Walking (Penguin, 2001, $18), Rebecca Solnit writes, “A city is a language, a repository of possibilities, and walking is the act of speaking that language, of selecting from those possibilities.” Wanderlust finds Solnit exploring the seemingly inexhaustible possibilities presented by walking. She highlights a few famous walkers — mountaineers, philosophers, poets —  whose perambulations have helped shape our culture. As the pace of life in the 21st century continues to accelerate, Solnit’s book on slowing down and taking one’s time will continue to be as relevant as it was when it was written.

New Releases for March:

March 7: Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Knopf, $15). Another easy to absorb, matter-of-fact treatise from MacArthur winner Adichie.

March 14: Free Women, Free Men: Sex, Gender, Feminism, by Camille Paglia (Pantheon, $26.95). For an entirely different analysis of 21st-century feminism, try Paglia.

March 21: The 1997 Masters: My Story, by Tiger Woods (Grand Central, $30). Probably has nothing to do with feminism, but a lot to do with walking!

March 28: The Bloody Mary: The Lore and Legend of a Cocktail Classic, with Recipes for Brunch and Beyond, by Brian Bartels (Ten Speed Press, $18.99). Perfect for that morning after-walk relaxer. OH

Scuppernong Bookshelf was written by Brian Etling, Shannon Jones, Brian Lampkin, Steve Mitchell and Dave White.

Clean Sweep

The clutter nonsense of purging

By Maria Johnson

This year, as the crocuses opened, I decided that a little housecleaning was in order because
a) it was spring, and what the heck, if I’m gonna tidy up once a year, it might as well be in the spring, and b) I was scared sleepless by the now-famous episode about the Greensboro woman on the season finale of the TV show Hoarders.

I usually don’t watch that show because, although it brings hoarding into the light and shows that people with the disorder can be helped, I also get the queasy feeling that it capitalizes on the illness and encourages the on-camera flare-ups that are inevitably rooted in fear and pain.

More important, watching a show like that has the same effect on me that researching aches and pains on the Internet does: It convinces me that I have the worst possible version of whatever the symptoms suggest.

Like the time my sore knee turned into a torn ACL as I sat at my laptop.

Or the time my back spasm turned into pancreatic cancer.

Or the time my dizziness declined into a rare disease named for someone who probably made himself sick by staying up all night reading medical books before the Internet came along.

And so, after watching Hoarders, I was stricken by the notion that I could be — no, probably was; no, definitely was — a hoarder.

I was hardly alone. A fastidious friend said that, after watching the same show, she made a beeline to her closet and started tossing stuff out. Later, she talked to a neighbor who’d been shaken up by the show, too. His house was pin-neat, but he feared that he was a hoarder because his closets and drawers were stuffed.

Understand that no one has ever accused me of being a spotless housekeeper. But I’m happy to report that I’m a recovering slob, thanks to thirty years of living with a Virgo. He, too, has benefitted by relaxing enough to let people eat in his car.

Oh, wait. I’m thinking of when we switch cars, and I eat in his car by myself.

Nevermind.

As I was saying, I’m a WHOLE lot neater than I used to be, but I do tend toward avalanche-zone closets, so after watching Hoarders, I resolved to attack our largest closet, which holds all of my clothes, some of my husband’s “off-season” clothes, and boxes of personal effects that I cleaned out of my childhood home two years ago.

I started with the boxes.

First up, a framed triptych of my black-and-white baby pictures. Awwww, look at me. Keeper.

Wow . . . a leather satchel that my dad carried as a schoolboy in Greece. There’s his name written in ink, in Greek, on the cloth liner inside. Can’t let this go. I need an easier target.

Perhaps a folder of my first-grade schoolwork will yield some disposables.

Hmmm. Here’s a writing sample, probably composed with a pencil the size of a broom handle.

“Oh, Dick. Come jump down. Oh, oh, Dick. Help me get Tim.”

Nice. I mean, a bit nympho-sounding, but lyrical all the same. Can’t toss my first — and last — bodice ripper.

Next up from 1967: A Thanksgiving turkey made from tracing my hand and coloring the finger-feathers different colors. Attractive. A prime example of post-Modernism, really. Pardon granted.

Looky here. A math worksheet. “Draw the correct number of fingers on Countingman.” Countingman, by the way, is a stick man with D-shaped hands that are just waiting for students to add the correct number of digits. What a sexist piglet exercise that was. I need to show this to my kids as evidence of how far we’ve come.

What’s this? Some old cardboard coasters. Well . . . hmmm . . . OK . . . I guess those can go.

Geez, this is hard.

I need a break. My eyes land on my clothes. Ah-ha. I rarely get emotionally attached to clothes. I cull a few tops that look nice on the hanger but never fit well.

What about this unreasonable collection of yoga pants?

Those stay, dammit, and I’ll tell you why.

In her best-selling book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, Marie Kondo advocates keeping things that spark joy.

In a slight variation on that theme, I advocate keeping things that spark sloth.

More than an hour has elapsed, and I’m making progress, but I still don’t have much to show for my time.

Until I focus on my husband’s end of the closet.

Hmmm. What have we here? Summer duds, eh?

Well, he never looked good in this. Or this. Or this. Or this. Or this. Or this. Or — oh, my God — THAT. I’ve always hated THAT.

Now, we’re getting somewhere.

Wonder what else he doesn’t need?

La-la-la-la. Let’s look in his main closet.

Wow. Check out all of those ties.

And shirts. C’mon. How often does the man wear shirts? I mean, all of them.

I dive in and literally start humming with happiness. I’m starting to feel the life-changing magic of tidying up other people’s stuff.

Soooo . . why not make a pass through his underwear drawer?

Holy moley. Show me a person — who’s not 3 or 103 — who needs this much underwear.

And socks? Overrated.

Much better. I’ve squirreled up a nice little pile for charity, and you know what? I’m feeling pretty good about this cleanup thing.  OH

Maria Johnson can be reached at ohenrymaria@gmail.com, but don’t be surprised if she deletes your email. She’s on a roll.

Food For Thought

A smorgasbord of cheap and tasty eats, and
Common Grounds for uncommonly good musicians

By Billy Eye

“Anybody who believes that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach flunked geography.” — Robert Byrne

Foodies . . . aren’t they funny folk? The other day a friend remarked that he was craving Five Guys, which reminded me, why have I never been tasked with writing a food column? Could it be because my palate is more of the wooden variety? Getting paid for eating . . . nothing could possibly top that unless I also landed a gig as a mattress tester.

There’s a movement afoot to entice us to eat locally; turns out you can get a terrific meal downtown for what inferior fast food costs. Cafe Europa tosses the best Caesar salad in town with that distinctive anchovy taste I long for. Buon Apetito in the Piedmont Building, with its impressive 1920s terra cotta & and stone entrance way, serves divine Italian roast beef hoagies with a warm amber au jus and side salad that I’m crazy about. Mid-City Sandwich Co., where Fincastles used to be, offers a simple but delish Reuben on rye; order half a sandwich and pair it with their garlic-rific tomato basil soup or a Thai chicken flatbread pizza.

Switch it up for lunch! As I sit here typing (can’t call it writing), I’m enjoying the finest hummus I’ve ever tasted and a kifta mezze of chopped lamb and beef blended with aromatic spices from Jerusalem Market that is to die for. Everything I’ve sampled there is just phenomenal; freshly prepared, healthy and the price is right. A slice of Caprese at Pizzeria L’Italiano is an addictive delight for the taste buds, and Noma at LeBauer Park offers sumptuously affordable Vietnamese and Thai specialties — red curry bowls, pho, fresh spring rolls with peanut dipping sauce and savory banh mi baguettes.

***

At year’s end there was an alarming number of empty storefronts languishing around the Tate Street commons; now, however, there are renewed but confusing signs of life there. For a brief moment, while the exterior of 413 Tate was being repainted, what was left of the 1992 signage for Nikita, our first Indian restaurant, was exposed like a note in a bottle tossed into the ocean of time. No. 413 was occupied by The College Shop from 1949 until the early 1980s when it was split into two units; in the mid-’80s it was home to Hot Tamales. Now inhabiting that space is Sam’s Oven & Grill where the menu is heavily tilted towards pizza, wings and subs. Odd, given that there are three other joints within a few yards slinging pizza and subs (besides New York Pizza and Manhattan there’s Slices which I highly recommend). Get this, there’s another pizzeria scheduled to open on the same block! A banner suggests that 331 Tate, that teeny-tiny, two-story storefront sandwiched between NYP and Sushi Republic, may again spring to life. It’s been largely abandoned since 1968 when the barber shop that operated out of there closed, but I heard a rumor a coffee shop was there briefly? You may be surprised to learn this was the original location of Leon’s Beauty Salon in the 1940s.

***

Attended a dynamite night of powerful music from Rhiannon Giddens, Molly McGinn and Laurelyn Dossett at Common Grounds the other night. Naturally, Eye showed up at the last minute for a concert that was sold out three hours after it was announced so there was no chance of getting in (yeah, right!). Space prohibits telling you just how brilliant these performers are, or how lucky we are to bask in their presence, but Common Grounds at Elam and Walker is increasingly becoming the city’s hippest musical nightspot. There was one revolting disruption, however. As Grammy winner Rhiannon Giddens was introducing a song she had written from a slave narrative, an inebriated club goer witlessly blurted out that his great aunt had written Gone With The Wind and had to be ejected. Jeez. 

***

I’ve been remiss for far too long in thanking Elise Allison at the History Museum for her invaluable assistance researching the most arcane and unusual aspects of our city’s history. What a rich resource we have in that museum and in curators like Elise who ensure our past remains is as alive and vibrant as the present. Also, congratulations to superfriend Nathan and Isabella Bueno who are expecting what will undoubtedly be the most beautiful baby girl ever. And little wonder: If this were Hollywood, Mom would likely be the next Liz Taylor.  OH

Have a suggestion as to where Billy Eye should wander next? Email billy@tvparty.com with “Billy Eye” in the subject line.