Life’s Funny

On Skunk Watch

By Maria Johnson

OK, you know  how sometimes your  husband is out in the backyard in his sweat pants at 5:30 a.m. because one of your dogs was going crazy at the window, and you let him (your dog) out, and he ran behind the trees, and now you can’t see him, but he’s still going nuts, and you decide that he (your husband) needs to go see what the matter is … ? 

And he (your husband) says, “Oh, for gawdsakes,” but he’s a good guy, so he goes outside and looks around, and says he doesn’t see anything, but you — who are standing at the door flapping your hands to urge him on — say, “Go look behind the trees.” And he says, “It’s dark! I don’t want to get sprayed by a skunk or something.” … ? 

And you, say, “SKUNK?! There are no SKUNKS around here!” because, sure, you’ve seen dead ones on the road, but you’ve never seen a live one … ? And then a week later, you’re coming down the stairs at about 11 at night, and you happen to glance out the window on the stair landing, and you go, “EEEEEEE!,” and your teenage son goes, “WHAT?” and you point at the street light, and your son rushes to the window to see what you see, which is a skunk ambling from the street into your front yard … ? 

And your son starts laughing … ? 

And the skunk keeps waddling like, “La-dee-da-da-da just another night in Skunkland.” … ? 

And you go, “EEEE!” again because the nonchalant skunk is getting closer to your house … ? 

And you run to the side windows and you see the nonchalant skunk walking along the fence like he’s done this before, many times in fact, and he’s looking for the opening, and you go, “Eeeee!” again … ? 

And your son goes, “He’s through!” … ? 

And it bothers you that your son is enjoying this so much, but now is not the time to discuss it because a nonchalant skunk is RIGHT BELOW YOUR WINDOW … ? 

And then you realize the air-conditioning unit is right below your window, too, and the last thing you want to do is alarm a nonchalant skunk that’s right beside the air-conditioning unit … ?And you whisper, “Don’t move! He’s right beside the air-conditioning unit.” … ? 

And your son is laughing so hard, it’s really getting on your nerves.… ? And you say, “Go outside and follow him!” … ? 

And he says, “YOU go outside and follow him.” … ? 

And you regret buying your son all those brain-building puzzles when he was little, and you think about waking up your husband, but you don’t want to have to admit he was right about the skunk thing, so you stand there frozen in skunk fear … ? 

Paralyzed because you realize that you are powerless because you can’t order a skunk off your property, and you can’t trap it, and even if you wanted to, you couldn’t shoot it without making a huge stink. … ? And then you think, “Wait a minute. Maybe that’s not a skunk after all because he doesn’t have white stripes down his back. He has a white crown, but  the rest of him is all-black, like some badass arch villain.” … ? 

And you do an emergency online search for “skunks without stripes,” which sounds a little like a humanitarian organization, and you see that there is such a thing, but it’s a freak occurrence, which means there’s a  MUTANT, BADASS, NONCHALANT SKUNK BESIDE YOUR AIR CONDITIONING UNIT … ? 

And an hour later, your dogs want out, so you put them on leashes, and walk them into the dark backyard, but you are tiptoeing in a crouch, lest you come face to face with anal glands. … ? 

And the next morning, you wake up thinking about your mutant, badass, nonchalant skunk, and you want to give him a name. …? 

You want to call him Stinky, but you think maybe that’s not fair because that’s just one aspect of his personality, but then you think, “We’re talking about  a damn skunk here.” … ? 

And you’re sipping your coffee, and your husband is leaving for work, and as he’s going out the door you say, “Make-it-a-good-day-there-was-a-skunk-in-our yard-last-night-bye.” … ? 

And then you’re online again, because you’re wondering why Stinky the BadAss, Nonchalant Skunk was on your suburban street, and you learn that skunks like chicken eggs, and you think of your chicken-keeping neighbors  across the street. … ? 

And you walk across the street later and ask your neighbor if he’s missing  any eggs, and he says no, but he almost stumbled over a skunk when he was out walking one night. … ? 

And you say, “What did you do?” and he says, “I got out of there. It was a skunk.” … ? 

And you think how skunks rule the world.… ? 

And that night, you sit by the front window and keep a StinkWatch. And  you ask yourself why, but deep down you know the answer — because his power fascinates you. … ? 

And just one more time, you’d like to see him swagger across your front yard  like he owns it — because he does. … ? 

Don’t you just hate it when that happens?

Birdwatch

Brown-Headed Nuthatch

The squeaky toy in Triad treetops

By Susan Campbell

If you have ever heard the sound of what  seems to be a squeaky toy coming from the treetops here in the Triad, you may have just had an encounter with a brown-headed nuthatch. This bird’s small size and active lifestyle make it challenging to spot, but once you know what to look — and listen — for, you will discover a common year-round resident and a bird of stunning, but subtle coloration. 

Brown-headeds are about four inches long with bright white bellies, contrasting gray backs and, as the name suggests, chocolate-brown crowns. Interestingly, males are indistinguishable from females. Their coloration creates perfect camouflage so they’re hard to see among the pine branches where they forage for seeds and insects. Their oversized bill allows them to pry open a variety of seeds as well as pine cones. With sharp eyes, you can see them dig deep in the cracks of tree bark hungry for grubs. By virtue of their strong feet and sharp claws, brown-headed nuthatches can clamber down the trunks of trees with the same ease that other birds crawl up.  

Although they do not sing, these birds have a distinctive two-syllable squeak that they sometimes roll together whenever they really get excited.  

Brown-headed nuthatches love bird feeders. So if you live near a significant stand of mature pines, you will have a good chance of seeing them up close. Brown-headeds, when they have found free food, will frequent both hanging suet and sunflower-seed feeders from dawn until dusk. They quickly grow accustomed to people, so viewing them at close range is possible, as are fantastic photo opportunities. 

This species is one of the area’s smallest breeding birds. It is a nonmigratory resident, living as a family group for most of the year. Unlike its cousin, the white-breasted nuthatch, which can be found in mixed forests across the state, the brown-headed is a bird that thrives only in mature pine forest. Brown-headeds are endemic to the southeastern United States, from coastal  Virginia through most of Florida and west to the eastern edge of Texas. Their range actually covers the historic reaches of the longleaf pine. This little bird, however, has adapted to living among loblolly and Virginia pines as large stands of longleaf pines have become scarcer and scarcer.  

Brown-headed nuthatches have long excavated their own nest holes in small dead trees in early spring. But over the years the number of the appropriate sized trees has diminished due to humans tidying up the landscape. Luckily, brown headed nuthatches have taken to using nest boxes whenever available. However, unless the hole is small enough to exclude larger birds such as bluebirds, they find themselves out-competed for the space. For this reason the species is now one of concern across the Southeast, with populations in decline. In addition to issues related to nesting, logging, fire suppression and forest fragmentation pose  significant challenges for brown-headed nuthatches. 

Because of the obstacles these small birds face, North Carolina Audubon has begun a campaign to encourage bird lovers to help brown-headed nut hatches. The goal is to increase smaller nest boxes available across our state by 10,000 within the next two years. Please consider getting involved and check out: nc.audubon.org/make-little-room-brown-headed-nuthatch.

Simple Life

A Long Song That Heralds Our Own Survival

By Jim Dodson

As I was leaving the Chapel Hill Country Club following a dinner talk the other night, heading home to the Sandhills with car windows open to the first balmy night in months, a wonderful sound stopped me in the middle of the road. It was music to my ears.

It was the sound of frogs croaking and peeping like mad from a nearby bog.

It was the sound of amphibians in love, one of the true and earliest signs of spring’s arrival.

Frogs and amphibians are believed to be the oldest living land creatures on earth and among the most endangered group of animals on the planet. By some estimates, a third of the world’s 2,000 species of frog are on the brink of extinction owing to man-made pollution, loss of habitat, natural predators, pesticides that disable their immune systems, climate change, road mortality and over-harvesting for pets and human consumption.

Since 1979 more than 200 species of frogs have already gone extinct.

Why should you and I care? Frogs are slimy, warty and resemble aliens, or least that strange dude who lives with his elderly mother down the street. And if you touch them you’ll become a warty mess, right?

Not true. Frogs and bats get the same bum rap. Both are critical to our web of life on this planet.

To begin with, frogs eat billions of disease-carrying ticks and mosquitos every year, not to mention gobble up viruses found in stagnant ponds. Moreover, their allegedly slimy skins — which are often stunningly beautiful — secrete substances that are vital to skin treatment in humans. Frogs used in medical research, for example, were critical to ten percent of the investigations that resulted in Nobel Prizes for physiology and medicine, while frogs that give it up naturally to birds and native species of fish are an invaluable part of the food web that makes up the complex biodiversity of the planet. Like canaries in the coal mine, frogs are a powerful bio-indicator of the living world’s general health.

A growing body of evidence beginning to appear consistently in the mainstream press these past few years suggests food preservatives and genetically modified food — including pesticides that have decimated honeybees and frogs — are a prime source of skyrocketing cancer rates in humans. Many health experts warn they will jump by 50 percent over the next decade, one more reason locally sourced organic foods and farm-to-table movements are growing like kudzu in an abandoned house.

Feel free to call me a frog-loving tree hugger if you like, but as vanishing frog and honeybee populations go, so goes our lonely green planet. Their fate holds a darkling mirror up to our own mortality.

My own frog awakening came two decades ago when a neighbor who lived by a nearby wetland in Maine invited me to go “frog-seeing” instead of “frog-gigging” on the warm nights of late March when the ice disappeared and the marsh came alive with frogs in search of mates, croaking their love-sick heads off.

She was a naturalist and state ecologist, the first person I ever heard say that if spring ever comes and you don’t hear the frogs wooing in the wetlands, man’s own wooing days on this earth will be severely numbered. In 1962, writer Rachel Carson said pretty much the same thing and gave birth to the nascent environmental movement in America. That prompted fierce opposition and scurrilous personal attacks from the chemical industry and right-wing nitwits for the publishing of Silent Spring, Carson’s expose that became a bestseller linking use of toxic pesticides to destruction of the environment and a major threat to the world’s food systems. Critics dismissed her as a liberal nut job and nature loony, even a communist trying to undermine the American way of life. In 1980, however, Carson, who began her career as a marine biologist working for the U.S. Fisheries and Wildlife departments, was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously and her likeness put on a U.S. Postage stamp. Every American today ought to thank their lucky stars she blew the whistle on DDT and other cancer-causing chemicals the corporate farming industry was pumping into processed foods and spraying over neighborhoods of the heartland with impunity.

Her book became the Bible of the environmental movement worldwide and, sadly, is as relevant today as it was half a century ago.

After spending my night with the frogs and subsequently reading Silent Spring, driving home through my neighborhood wetland at night became one of the more entertaining challenges of spring in New England. On any given night in March or early April, thousands of singing hoppers crossed the road to assignations in adjacent vernal ponds, most taking their own sweet time. Those of us who lived in the area knew to take our time to avoid a true frogageddon.

A neighbor’s concerned middle-school daughter even put up hand-made signs by the side of the road that read, “Frogs Crossing — Please Drive Carefully!”

The lusty frog chorus up in Chapel Hill Wednesday night not only reminded me of that sweet annual migration, but announced that Southern winter has finally loosened its grip and spring may really be on the doorstep.

It also reminded me of why I dig frogs and honeybees and plan to do whatever I can to assure they’re with us for a long time.

Over the past few years I’ve had a large and curiously laid-back frog I call Henry inhabit my terrace garden area. He’s so large I have no idea whether Henry’s technically a frog or a toad. He may even be Henrietta — last year I saw a number of baby Henrys hopping around my fern beds. But either way, even Rufus the cat, who briefly tried to stalk and foolishly dispatch Henry but wound up instead being (you’ll pardon the expression) sick as a dog, now respects Henry and gives him wide berth. He’s just part of the backyard menagerie and always seems to be around when I’ve had my fill of human exposure and need some peace and quiet in nature.

There’s worse things than having a cold Sam Adams and reviewing your long day at work with a sympathetic frog whose kind have been on this earth for more than 400 million years. Henry always looks as if he’s heard all of it before but I find I’m always in a better mood after one of our little chats. I look forward to seeing him again this year.

The annual Save the Frog Day is April 26, and a website called Savethefrogs.com can give you plenty of practical reasons why you should love and try to protect frogs, too — and be grateful when you hear their noisy courtship songs on an early spring night, a love song meant to herald our own survival.

Reprinted with permission from PineStraw magazine.

Saltywords

The Card Carrying Southerner

A mini-guide for those from someplace else

By Nan Graham

I was once asked to teach a class on how to be a Southerner. After picking myself off the floor and recovering from hysterical laughter, I respectfully declined.  

But it makes me think that there really is a need for a card for newcomers to our part of the world . . . those “from someplace else,” as I like to call them, since I consider the “Y” word unkind. Laminated, this card could be carried in your wallet like your driver’s license or how-to-tip card.  

The card would be a ready aid for those unfamiliar with Southern mores and customs. You could refer to it discreetly as needed. Learn to palm this card and pretend to cough when you glance at the appropriate Southern reference. 

Food: 

Southerners could easily adopt the Malaysian culture, whose greeting is not, “How are you?” but instead, “Have you eaten?” I believe that salutation could be right up there with, “How’s your Mama?” which is usually the second thing Southerners say after their opening shot. We do love our food. Foods you eat, serve and discuss in detail: 

Watermelon . . . how to select, how to cut, how to eat. Thumping a melon is akin to tire kicking in the automobile world. It may not tell you anything, but it sure makes you look like you know what you are doing. The trick is to flick your index finger off your thumb and strike the surface of the watermelon. Bend your cocked head toward the melon and listen intently. The best watermelons will have a distinct hollow sound as opposed to a flat, non-resonant sound. Even if you can’t tell the difference, pretend you can.  

Always cut the melon long-ways. Like the deviled egg or asparagus spear, watermelon is considered a finger (or hand-held) food by some. Eating with a fork is permissible if you prefer not to bury your face in the juicy crimson crescent. 

Know when to say barbecue and when to say pig pickin’ (remember, it is essential to drop the final g). 

Understand that grits is never eaten with sugar. It is a cardinal Southern sin. Butter, salt and pepper, please. Grits is a singular collective noun . . . never refer to it as they or them. You will never meet a single grit as they always hang out in an inseparable crowd. “Yes. Grits? I will have some more of it.” . . . Never them.  

When speaking of produce, be sure to use the specific name. White corn will not do; say “Silver Queen” or “Peaches and Cream.” Same goes for tomatoes. It’s “Better Boy” or “Best Boy.” This specificity gives you that air of agrarian authority we Southerners love to affect. 

Okra is a quintessential Southern food. Overcoming the dreaded slime factor is essential for the okra indoctrination. Start with fried okra and graduate to pickled okra and gumbo. 

Deviled eggs are required at most Southern gatherings. It is imperative that you have a platter designed and designated specifically for the deviled egg. I  claim deviled eggs my long suit. Refusing to call them “stuffed eggs,” I consider them a staple of every Southern party and picnic: the gastronomical treat that’s hard to beat. And catnip to all men.  

I have Mama’s hobnail glass deviled egg plate, a must for any Southern soul  serving deviled eggs at home or abroad. I was shocked to learn that my friend  Jane, planning to take the ubiquitous eggs to her family reunion, did not possess  such a plate . . . that round glass or china platter with a dozen half egg-shaped  wells encircling it. In the flat center, you can put more eggs or sliced tomatoes  and cukes, pickled okra or some such. I bought Jane this necessity as an early  Christmas gift. She can now avoid being the object of muffled snickering at the family gathering.  

My own egg plate once ventured out to a WHQR Public Radio Board and Commentator party. I covered the to-die-for eggs garnished with cherry tomatoes and basil with Saran wrap, parked on an unusually busy Front Street and headed out, eggs elevated shoulder-high on one hand to maneuver my way through the crowd to the destination a block away. 

I got to the address and read the sign. It was a hookah bar. I thought the Board had really kicked over its traces with a fresh and interesting choice of venue. I sailed through the incense, deviled eggs on high, toward a bearded man. Like a stout, elderly Blanche DuBois, eternally dependent on the kindness of strangers and poor lighting, I asked if this was the place for the WHQR party.

The bearded gentleman inside could not have been nicer . . . or more confused. His usual clientele is rarely an ancient woman carrying an egg plate aloft in one hand, waitress-style, and clutching an email with the address and phone number in the other.  

“No, no WHQR board meeting here,” he assured me. I showed him my email. “Yes, this is the same address.” Always prepared, I had no cellphone with me.  

“Can you call this phone number for me?” I  asked. He returned from the phone with another address on Third Street. “Your host was wondering where you were . . . with your deviled eggs.” 

I thanked him warmly, trudged back to the parked car to drive around the block. When the party was over, I took my empty egg plate to go home. Too bad the deviled wonders were all gone . . . I really would like to have left a few with that lovely Hookah gentleman.  

Loving our pests and critters:

Never show a fear of waterbugs, aka, roaches. Like a horse, a roach can sense your fear. It might  become aggressive. Genteel South Carolinians call them Palmetto bugs. “Palmetto bugs” doesn’t really work for this Carolinian. I suggest you give them individual names and pretend they are family pets. Frisky or Big Mo. Saddle them up and have the younger grandchildren ride them. 

Do not attempt this familiarity with the no see-ums or even the see-ums native to this part  of the country, a species of tiny insects clearly too size-challenged to be wrangled or too ornery to be domesticated.  

Language: 

Use lots of similes and metaphors in your colorful narrations. Make hyperbole your best friend: “Most politicians are as crooked as a dog’s hind leg.”  

“South Carolina is too small to be a republic and too large to be an insane asylum.” 

My favorite from the late Doug Marlette: a little Southern “town so backwoods even the Episcopalians handled snakes.”  

Giveaways to avoid: Never say soda instead of soft drink or cola. Only north of the Mason Dixon is it soda or pop. 

And our glorious, long-gone Wrightsville Beach beachfront pavilion . . . wondrous, blazing with lights “like a Baptist window,” as Truman Capote once wrote. It’s called Lumina, not the Lumina. 

Never use the article to speak of the historic building. It will reveal you as an outlander. 

*Note: Two references to Southern authors, Doug Marlette and Truman Capote, establish the fact that you are familiar with regional literati. Name dropping is encouraged. 

Do not say “Hi” instead of the requisite “Hey” upon meeting a stranger on the street. Do not  revert to omitting any greeting at all. In the South, if it moves, you speak to it.  

Acceptable Pets: 

Boykin spaniels, Plott hounds, Labrador retrievers or any hunting dog . . . no Maltese or Yorkies or combo lapdogs (peekapoos) will do. Not manly enough. Even a couch potato mutt must affect the  nonchalant air of a sporting breed. And please have a story and breed name for that rescue dog. “Oh,  that’s Thurston. He’s a Fuquay-Varina Spaniel. Very rare, but a fine hunter. Comes from a Southern  breed that accompanied General Beauregard at the launching of the Hunley submarine in Mobile?” (The question mark at the end of your sentence is said with a lilt, which indicates it is not really a question, but a reassurance that surely your listener already knows these facts.) 

Ancestors: 

Get some. This is essential. Portraits are available in all antique stores. Also check consignment  stores. Hang in your living room and make up outrageous stories about your newly purchased eccentric. “This is great-aunt Hettibelle. She was one of five sisters whose folks named each daughter with ‘belle’ at the end of her name: Lulabelle, Marybelle, Annabelle and Corabelle. Unfortunately the name did not prove prophetic as you can plainly see by  Hettibelle’s portrait. Notice the artist included a feathered fan in the portrait.” (Wave your hand  gracefully toward the painting.) “This is the artist’s nod to Hettibelle’s passion. She raised chickens, which she named after Biblical characters and trained to do a sort of nineteenth century line dance. General Sherman was so enthralled with the hens’ performance that he left the ‘Big House’ standing but did gallop off with Bathsheba and Esther, two of Hettibelle’s favorites, tucked under his blue jacket.” Your story can continue, unless your listener’s eyes appear to have glazed over. 

Nicknames:  

Invent one. They are as essential as ancestors. Bill Slocumb from Goldsboro was nicknamed Suicide Slocumb. Unfortunately, his occupation was commercial airline pilot. My husband always  said if the pilot ever came on and announced  “Hello, this is your pilot, Suicide Slocomb,” that I was to deplane immediately. I have a feeling I would have company exiting the plane.  

There you have it. Your own mini-guide to transforming yourself into a Southern local. Simple. And just in time for the tourist season!

Simple Life

A Little Rain Must Fall, and It’s a Good Thing

By Jim Dodson

It’s raining this morning, a Sunday in April.

Few things, meteorologically speaking, make me happier.

Sunday is my favorite day, soft rain a gardener’s blessing. Together, rainy Sundays make the world a smaller, quieter place, encouraging some hardworking folks — my beautiful wife, let’s say — to burrow a bit longer under covers before she’s roused by the muddy-pawed dogs to mount one of her famous Sabbath day breakfasts, with time allowed for good behavior to read the morning paper front to back, to talk of small things and savor a peace that passeth weekday understanding.

For me, rainy Sundays stir involuntary memories, much the way an oven-warm madeleine did the poet Proust.

The steady drip of my very green terrace garden reminds me of solitary days of childhood living in a succession of the small sleepy Southern towns where my father worked at the newspaper and my brother and I were pretty much left to roam the surrounding world untethered. We were rarely inside the house, boxcar children growing wild.

First there was Gulfport, where my mother and I would walk the broad flat beach in the evening collecting interesting shells and looking out for approaching storms over the vast Gulf of Mexico, a body of water that was often as still as bathwater but reportedly coughed up more diverse kinds of shells than any other ocean. A mountainous press foreman named Tiny Earl, who worked at the small newspaper my father owned with a silent partner, informed me that we lived in “Hurricane Alley” and predicted that any day now a “killer” hurricane could churn up out of the Gulf to wreak incredible devastation.

I was thrilled at this prospect and soon wrote off to the National Geographic Society for an official Hurricane Watch Kit that included a special map of hurricane patterns and a preparation guide, plus membership card and a pair of special yellow binoculars bearing the logo of the NGS.

A few impressive storms did boil out of the Gulf during the three years we lived across the street from the state beach, bringing curtains of rain and wind and lightning but disappointingly no named hurricanes that I could later declare that I not only witnessed but somehow survived. That distinction would come half a century later when Hurricane Katrina wiped away that whole section of the coast and probably our old house with it.

Still, my earliest memory of life save for those evening shell hunts with my pregnant mother was the sound of quiet Sunday morning rain dripping from the eaves of our house as I sat in a cardboard moving box on its broad front porch leafing through illustrated adventure books I could almost read.

My mother lost her baby the same week my father lost his newspaper owing to a partner who favored fancy linen suits and cleaned out the paper’s bank accounts before running off to Mexico or Cuba after his Kiwanis luncheon with the shapely cigarette girl from a downtown hotel.

We wound up for eighteen months living by Greenfield Lake in Wilmington, where the weather either seemed blazingly hot and sunny or moodily cool and rainy. I learned to swim in the little lagoon by the bridge to Wrightsville Beach on a rainy Sunday after church, dog paddling about while a sudden shower freckled the still surface of the water. I also learned to ride a bicycle that year, 1958, pedaling shakily along the oyster-shelled foot paths of Airlie Gardens and the paved sidewalks around Greenfield Lake, my tires singing on the wet pavement.

After my mother’s second miscarriage, we spent a strangely magical year living in Florence, South Carolina, where my father worked at the newspaper and my mother was nursed back to health by a kind and wonderful Black woman named Jesse May Richardson, who looked after my brother and me during the week and always checked in on us after her own church services on Sunday.

Jesse May taught my mother about garden plants and how to cook “real” Southern food, and me to feet dance by lifting me up by my skinny white-boy arms and lowering me onto her own sensible shoes, shimmying us around the floor while dinner cooked on the stove and gospel music played from her transistor radio sitting in the kitchen window. It was Miss Jesse May who first informed me that rain is holy, the Lord’s way of making the world grow and prosper, so never complain about a rainy day, one of many things she told me — often quite bossily at times — including that no civilized child ever removes his shoes in a public place, certainly not a grocery store, no matter how hot the day outside happens to be or how cool the tiled floor underfoot.

It rained the Sunday we went to see Miss Jesse May in the colored wing of the Florence Memorial Hospital. My parents refused to tell my brother and me what was wrong with her. We came straight from church. It was midwinter, gray and misty. My mother took her bright spring flowers from the florist shop near the newspaper, and she seemed pleased we’d come.

Her funeral a week later was held at a Baptist Church, on a bright sunny day. I believe that was Saturday. On Sunday it rained. My mother said that was just Miss Jesse May watering our garden. Within weeks, we moved home to Greensboro, where I joined Miss Chamberlain’s second grade class at Braxton Craven Elementary. That week we were asked to bring a poem to class and read it aloud. I chose Robert Louis Stevenson’s poem “Rain,” a simple ditty lodged in my head to this day.

The rain is raining all around,

It falls on field and trees,

It rains on the umbrellas here,

And on the ships at sea.

His message seems clear. Rain feeds the Earth and oceans and connects us all to each other. But Miss Jesse May was right, too. Rain is holy, perhaps the holiest of waters, blessed by a much higher authority than a mere priest in robes, the farmer’s best friend, the poet’s perfect metaphor. Why else is water mentioned just thirty-nine words into the Book of Genesis, even before the Almighty made light to separate the day from night, even before He made land and stars, the beasts of the field, the birds of the sky and man. We bathe in water, we baptize new life with it; rainwater washes away dust, cleanses city windows and the windows of the soul; makes the world green and forever new.

In Judaic, Moslem and even some Christian beliefs, Sunday is considered the first day of the week. In broader Christianity, however, it is the Lord’s Day of rest, a final day of the week, Sabbath day: meant to be honored by doing little more than resting and making prayers of Thanksgiving. The name “Sunday” derives from pre-Christian Hellenic astrology and was considered to be the “Day of the Sun” celebrated by ancient Romans, a pagan symbol of light eventually adopted by emerging Christian culture. For this reason, many early Christian churches were constructed so worshippers faced East, the direction of the rising sun.

In 312, after Christ reportedly appeared to him in a dream the night before a battle against his leading rival, Rome’s Emperor Constantine officially legalized Christianity and, legend holds, converted to the new religion himself. Nine years later he decreed the Day of the Sun to be a day of rest for everyone, extending a lone exemption to gardening types.

“Persons engaged in agriculture may freely and lawfully continue their pursuits; because it often happens that another day is not so suitable for grain-sowing or vine-planting; lest by neglecting the proper moment for such operations the bounty of heaven should be lost.”

Seventeen centuries later, any self-respecting weekend gardener fully grasps the Emperor’s logic on the matter, which explains why on rainy Sunday mornings, lest the bounty of heaven be lost, I’m prone to skip church in favor of getting gloriously wet and dirty in my garden.

Besides, as the Dorothy Frances Gurney ditty that stood on a standard in my mother’s voluptuous peonies for decades sagely reminded, one is nearer God’s heart in a garden than anywhere else on the Earth.

I take that fully to heart, aiming to wring every earthly pleasure possible out of a long rainy Sunday. Following garden work and a nice hot shower comes a guilt-free nap, time with a good book or an old movie, an evening walk with wife and dogs and an early supper — in short, the perfect way to start, or conclude, a busy week.

If one happens to drift off to sleep with the sound of soft rain purling in the gutters the way it did in those far-away years on a porch, with the faintest rumble of distant thunder hinting at hurricanes that never quite arrive, all the better. Such is a true bounty of Heaven.

Reprinted with permission from the May 2016 issue of PineStraw Magazine.

Notes from the Porch

A Port in the Storm

A boy, a pony, an unforgettable image of peaceful friendship

By Bill Thompson

The overly pessimistic weather forecasters predicted that the “tropical depression” would “dump a lot of rain” and produce “potentially dangerous winds.” It was actually just a breezy spring rain storm.  

On my way back from a luncheon in Morehead City, I stopped for gas at a convenience store somewhere in Carteret County. The rain was still falling, and on the tiny traffic islands in front of the store, the erratic wind created wobbly oleanders, their lavender flowers complemented by contrasting gray sky. 

While pumping gas, I noticed across the road a small fenced-in pasture. The fence appeared a weathered gray, the product of many rains and ensuing sunshine. It enclosed an area no larger than fifty square yards. The gray  boards and the green grass drew a distinction between the old and the new, a ribbon of gray durability surrounding a green declaration of new growth. The grass was high but losing the growth battle to the weeds that whipped back and forth, up and down, in the wind and steady rain.  

At first glance I didn’t notice the small shed at the back of the enclosure, but a movement in that direction got my attention. A boy, maybe 12 or 13  years old, had hoisted himself up to sit on the feed box in the back corner of the shed. His companion was a small Shetland pony that had also retreated to the protection of the shed.  

The boy was dressed in typical warm-weather garb: a pair of shorts and a T-shirt. He also wore a pair of cowboy boots. The incongruous footwear may have been for protection or because, in a young boy’s fantasy world, a cowboy always wears his boots.  

The pony’s shaggy coat was flattened and wet along the top of his back  where the rain had soaked it, and he was standing just under the boy’s outstretched legs. When the boy began to rub his boot-clad feet along the  pony’s back, its short, furry ears lay back on its head as it backed up closer to the boy. They both seemed to be enjoying each other’s company, providing a certain amount of mutual comfort as well as protection from the rain. 

A neatly trimmed line of boxwoods ran between the fence and the highway. From my point of view across the bushes, I could see only the top of  the handle of what appeared to be a lawnmower on the inside of the fence. It was a small push mower, abandoned between the shed and the fence, which ran parallel to the highway. 

I began to make some assumptions based on my own boyhood experiences. Apparently, the boy’s assignment had been to give the pasture a much-needed mowing. Dutifully, he had begun his task but, as evidenced by the newly mowed path, he had made only one round before seeking refuge with his equine partner. It was probably not an unwelcome situation. Not only had the boy gotten a respite from his chore, but he was also able to share the company of a friend. 

I finished pumping gas and started to get back on the road again. As I turned back onto the highway, I could see clearly the scene in the little shed  at the back of the pasture across the road. There was the boy, sitting on a feed box, leaning back into the corner of the building; his arms folded across  his chest; chin down and eyes closed. It was a most remarkable, tranquil scene: the image of the boy, his legs straight out in front of him, his feet on the back of the pony, which was standing very still with his shaggy head  hanging drowsily. It was a portrait of two friends resting safely in each other’s company as the rain and the wind swirled around them.

Bill Thompson is a speaker and author who lives in Hallsboro. 

Simple Life

April’s Aviary

Remembering the Birds of Paradise

By Jim Dodson

Reprinted with permission from the April issue of PineStraw Magazine.

Maybe T. S. Eliot had it right about April. It is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory with desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain.

That was certainly the case for me 35 years ago this April when I ventured out to a rain-rutted ball field with broken fences, a few blocks from my house in midtown Atlanta, simply looking to write a sweet little piece for the Sunday magazine where I worked about the return of spring and rebirth of youth baseball in my racially mixed neighborhood.

Truthfully, I hoped such a piece might provide a much-needed lift to my mood, complicated by the breakup of my marriage engagement to a local anchorwoman and the work I’d been doing of late, interviewing pointy-headed Klansmen in Alabama and writing about Atlanta’s dubious new designation as the “Murder Capital of America.”

In short, it was a city under siege from a wave of terrifying murders of adolescent Black kids that started the summer of 1979. More than a dozen young men had been killed by some unknown person or persons, their  bodies grimly tossed into the Chattahoochee River. The police seemed helpless to find the perpetrators, and the city was on a knife’s edge of tension.

Maybe sixty kids showed up for the League tryouts that warm April afternoon, barely enough to compose five teams. I watched them go through their drills and the league’s director, a slightly frazzled woman with gray hair and a clipboard, a tough old bird named Miss Brenda, divide them up into squads, leaving one team — the Highland Park Orioles — one player short.

They were also missing a coach.

The Reluctant Coach

Miss Brenda spotted me making notes behind the sagging third-base fence and walked over.

“Hey, you know anything about baseball?”

I admitted I’d played growing up in North Carolina. Baseball was my passion at that time. I was also personally subsidizing Ted Turner’s cellar-dwelling Braves with a season ticket and had just written a profile of Braves slugger Dale Murphy for a national sports magazine.

“Great,” she said, “you can coach the Orioles. Their coach didn’t show up.”

“Oh, really, no I can’t,” I protested.

She gave me a hard look. “Why is that? You don’t like kids?”

So I gave in. I really don’t know why. She handed me a list of twelve names and a shopping bag with fifteen Oriole orange T-shirts, all the same size.

“I’ve got you guys scheduled for a first practice tomorrow. The season starts Saturday morning. You’re playing the Astros. Last year they won the league title.”

I went back to my new apartment on the ground floor of an old mansion on Monroe Drive and opened a cold beer, wondering what I’d gotten myself into.

Eleven players showed up for the first practice, seven Black kids, four white. Four players were head and shoulders above the rest — Alvin, Pete, his brother, Freddie and Rodney. They were pals from the same block in Capital Homes, possibly the worst housing project in the city, a place so dangerous even the beat cops I knew well hated to venture there after dark.

The Gang of Four, as I took to calling them from day one, filled the most vital spots on the field. Easygoing Freddie went to first, his chatty brother Pete pitched, Alvin took third and a fireplug named Rodney caught. Pete and Alvin would alternate at pitcher. Both had blazing fastballs and remarkable control.

Milkshake Heroes

If the infield was anchored by four terrific athletes, the rest of the field was chaos, seven kids who’d never played organized baseball. Two didn’t even have decent gloves. The first of many financial investments I made in the team was to purchase a couple of fielder gloves the night before our first game. Another was to spring for a dozen (cheap) orange baseball caps.

We got drilled that Saturday by the mighty Astros, a lopsided game owing in part to the fact that Rodney the catcher failed to show up. The fill-in catcher kept jumping out of the way of Pete’s fastballs.

“His daddy won’t let him come no more,” Pete explained.

“Why is that?’

“He don’t want him to get killed by the crazy man.”

After the game, I drove the gang home in my aging Volvo wagon. On the way there, for reasons that elude me, I stopped at Woody’s and bought them chocolate milkshakes. Woody’s was a neighborhood institution, run by a couple of fastidious fellows who made the city’s best milkshakes and cheese steaks.

The gang lived off a street ironically named Paradise Street. Pete directed me to Rodney’s house. I knocked and the door opened. A wary Black dude stared at me and asked me what I wanted.

I told him who I was and explained that we’d missed having Rodney at our first game.

“He wants to play. But he ain’t comin’ no more,” the man said.

“Why is that, sir?”

“Cause all this killin’ goin’ on. I don’t want him walkin’ nowhere.”

I nodded. “What about this. What if I agree to pick up Rodney and his friends and bring them home?”

His gaze narrowed suspiciously. “Why would you do that?”

“Because he needs baseball,” I said — choosing not to add that suddenly I realized I needed it, too.

“You do that,” he said, “and he can play.”

The next Friday afternoon we demolished the Chandler Park Yankees, who never even got a hit. The Gang of Four was incredible. After the game, I foolishly sprung for milkshakes again.

Birds of Paradise

Over the next eight weeks, as the grim body count from Atlanta’s missing and murdered children crisis mounted, we didn’t lose a game — won them, in fact, by lopsided margins, football scores. Pete and Alvin were basically unhittable. Ready Freddie was cool as a cucumber, and Rodney was born to catch. I started calling them all the Birds of Paradise. In a way, that’s what they were to me.

We easily won the league championship in early June, wiping the field with the once mighty Astros. We got nice little trophies and Miss Brenda wrung my hand.

“Thanks for helping out,” she said. “See you next spring.”

“Thank you,” I said. “But I might have a job in Washington.”

“Nah,” she said. “You’ll be back. The Birds will too.”

On the way home, we stopped off at Woody’s for a final milkshake and cheese steak. The team was so rowdy the owners threatened to throw us out.

The winter of 1980 was a busy one for me. I followed candidate George Bush across the frozen tundra of New England for the presidential primaries and went with him to Puerto Rico. I wrote more murder stories and hung out with the last gator hunter in the Okefenokee Swamp. Washington was still making noises, but the job offer didn’t come.

Miss Brenda called right at the crack of April. “Tryouts are this Wednesday, Coach. I’ll let you have the same players who’ve come back.”

The Birds of Paradise were all back. The routine resumed — adding a couple more from Capital Homes to the load.

Naturally our first game was a no-hitter. Milkshakes and cheese steaks followed.

The Birds of Paradise asked to see where I worked, so I brought them downtown to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. They were beautifully behaved, perfect manners all around — though on the way home, as usual, they ransacked my car.

I suggested a team cookout at my apartment, hoping their parents might come. Only one white mother came. My new girlfriend helped out. The Birds had a glorious time playing my records and wrecking my home office, even finding my stash of Playboy magazines.

We didn’t lose a game in season two. Our victory supper was held at Woody’s, of course. The owners now welcomed us. The best part came when Dale Murphy stopped by to say hello. The Birds went crazy.

Cast Into the Wind

On a lark, I called up the president of the Buckhead youth baseball league and suggested we play an unofficial Metro championship. He liked the idea and suggested we do it at their field in the all-white suburbs. I even drove Pete and Freddie out to see the field. Unlike ours, their field had lights, actual bleachers, a perfect grass surface, even a concession stand.

A day later though, the Buckhead guy called me back and said we had to cancel. “Some of our parents think it might make your kids feel bad, given all that’s going on right now.”

I took the Birds for a final round of shakes and steaks at Woody’s and apologized.

A week or so after this, a self-styled music promoter named Wayne Williams was arrested for the murder of two adults and accused by Atlanta police of  being responsible for twenty-three of the twenty-nine missing and murdered children. A year later he was convicted and is serving a life sentence.

Not long after that, I left for Washington and eventually moved to New England.

A decade later, I tracked down the original Gang of Four and invited them out to dinner in Buckhead with my wife, Alison.

Pete, Ready Freddie and Rodney showed up. Alvin was in the Army and couldn’t make it. Rodney was about to join the Navy. Freddie and Pete had both gone to college, Freddie on a scholarship.

We had a fine time, talking about those remarkable baseball seasons, then we hugged and parted, promising to stay in touch.

Not long ago I was in Atlanta on business and was pleased to discover Woody’s was still there, still packed, still selling great cheese steaks and shakes.

I sat in a corner booth where the Birds used to gather, making way too much noise and horsing around, thinking how grateful I remain to them for ransacking my life when I needed it most.

Wherever they flew away to in this world, I hope they know how much they meant to me.