Retracing Washington’s Footsteps

Touring a nation divided, then and now

By Stephen E. Smith

When historian Nathaniel Philbrick decided upon the title Travels with George for his most recent book, he took on a hefty obligation. In three words he employed two significant allusions. First, “Travels with” references Travels with Charley, Steinbeck’s classic travelogue (Charley was Steinbeck’s pet poodle) in which the author of Grapes of Wrath takes a thoughtful look at a sedate 1960s America. Second, the name “George” alludes to the George in American history — George Washington.

Oh, no, you might groan, not another book about Washington. His diaries are available in a four-volume set, there are numerous explications of his writings, and we are inundated with scholarly biographies. Barring newly discovered facets of Washington’s life or a passing reassessment of his faults and virtues, what is there left to say about the man?

But if new material were unearthed, Philbrick would likely write about it. He is the author of a dozen popular histories and has a following among middlebrow readers who thrive on fascinating facts about our country’s origins. His works are perceptive and relevant and always worth reading. Travels with George is no exception.

The title immediately divides the book into two distinct narratives that Philbrick skillfully intertwines. The first is the “tour.” When Washington became president in 1789, he found America divided into two factions. There were no Republican or Democrat parties, but the country was split by two opposing views of how the government should function: citizens who favored the Constitution (Federalists) and those who didn’t (Anti-Federalists). If the country were to be united, there was one man who possessed the prestige to encourage a sense of unity. So, it was that Washington set out on a 1789-1791 journey that would take him from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in the North to Savannah, Georgia, in the South. He embarked on his tour in a fancy horse-drawn coach (the chariot) and kept a sketchy commentary of his journey. Philbrick and his wife travel by car with their dog, Dora, a red, bushy-tailed Nova Scotia retriever. The physical America they encounter would, of course, be unrecognizable to Washington, but the divisions that trouble our politics would not be foreign to his understanding of democracy.

Washington spurned undue adoration. He was not fond of crowds and military honor guards, and he avoided both whenever possible. But he was also sensitive to social and political slights. When Gov. John Hancock of Massachusetts avoided dining with Washington, the first president never forgot the snub. Moreover, the Washington most Americans think they know — Parson Weems’ godlike contrivance — has little in common with the Father of Our Country.

“This is the Washington who was capable of punishing an enslaved worker who repeatedly attempted to escape by selling him to the sugar plantations in the Caribbean,” Philbrick writes. “This is the Washington who in the days before leaving for the Constitutional Convention had an enslaved house servant whipped for repeatedly walking across the freshly planted lawn in front of Mount Vernon.” A particularly ghastly example of Washington’s cruelty was his habit of having living teeth pulled from jaws of his slaves and implanted in his own toothless head.

The new president completed his tour of the Middle Atlantic states and New England before turning his attention to the states south of Virginia, a part of the country with which he was unfamiliar. Once in North Carolina, he spent the night in Tarboro and left early the next morning to avoid the dust that would be kicked up by a company of local cavalry that planned to escort him to New Bern. When he reached “a trifling place called Greenville,” the riders — and the dust — caught up with him.

“By that point Washington had entered a landscape that was new and utterly strange to him,” Philbrick writes, “the domain of the longleaf pine — a species of tree most of us in the twenty-first century have never seen but that in the eighteenth century covered an estimated ninety million acres, all the way south from North Carolina to Florida and as far west as Texas.”

Washington found the North Carolina landscape a bit unsettling. The longleaf forests were dense and shadowy, and he wrote that the landscape was “the most barren country I ever beheld,” but conceded that “the appearances of it are agreeable, resembling a lawn well covered with evergreens and a good verdure below from a broom of coarse grass which having sprung since the burning of the woods, had a neat and handsome look. . . .”

Washington was feted at balls and celebrations. He endured flea-infested beds in dilapidated taverns and the adulation of the ever-present paramilitary escorts. He even inspired a little romantic speculation when he visited with Nathanael Greene’s widow at Mulberry Grove Plantation outside Savannah. From there he passed through Augusta, Camden, Salisbury and Old Salem before returning to Mount Vernon.

The second component of Travels with George is not a comparison and contrast with Washington’s tours, but is more a mildly political semi-narrative supported by documents, maps and photographs. The Philbricks and their dog are agreeable company — their perceptions are folksy and laced with wit and intriguing observations — but inevitably, Philbrick must address the political divisions that trouble contemporary America.

After visiting Greene’s plantation, Philbrick wrote: “I was tempted to believe that a monster had been born in Mulberry Grove. But it was worse than that. A monster is singular and slayable. What haunts America is more pervasive, more stubborn, and often invisible. It is the legacy of slavery, and it is everywhere.” Reinforcing this point of view, Philbrick quotes from observations Washington made in his farewell address to the nation.

What troubled Washington was what might happen if a president’s priority was to divide rather than unite the American people: “It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration,” Washington wrote. “It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which finds a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions.”

Washington might well have been writing about America at this moment, and readers who find themselves agreeing politically with Philbrick and Washington are likely to experience Travels with George as a pleasant and reassuring read. Those who disagree probably won’t make it beyond the preface.  OH

Stephen E. Smith is a retired professor and the author of seven books of poetry and prose. He’s the recipient of the Poetry Northwest Young Poet’s Prize, the Zoe Kincaid Brockman Prize for poetry and four North Carolina Press Awards.

Salt of the Earth

Building a business together

By Wiley Cash  •  Photographs by Mallory Cash

The interior of the building is warm and smells like the ocean. The walls and ceiling are constructed of white corrugated plastic sheets, all of them glowing beneath the bright noonday sun. Nets hang from the ceiling above tables that hold large wooden trays, their bottoms lined with thick, restaurant-grade plastic.

Jason Zombron looks down into one of the trays of white crystals that seem to have arranged themselves in haphazard patterns. If you stare long enough, it appears that the ocean is in each tray, dozens of tides frozen in time, doing their best to return to their previous form. After all, just a few days ago, this salt was floating somewhere in the Atlantic, but now it has made its way here to a piece of land in Burgaw, North Carolina, where Jason and his wife, Jeanette Philips, own and operate Sea Love Sea Salt.

Jason picks up a small shovel and scoops up a load of crystals, which have hardened into countless geometric shapes, from squares to pyramids. Jeanette stands nearby. “I never get tired of this,” she says, her voice quiet as if she’s whispering a prayer. “Every time I witness it happen, it takes my breath away. It sits here with the sun and the heat until it’s ready to be harvested. We’re not doing anything to make this happen.”

While heat and evaporation are the final steps in creating salt, Jeanette and Jason actually do a lot to make it happen before it gets to that point. The venture begins in Wrightsville Beach, where, in a process and at a location that Jason and Jeanette are wisely hesitant to disclose, water is extracted from the ocean and pumped into a 275-gallon tank on the back of a trailer. From there, the water is transported to rural Burgaw and the 3-acre farm that Jason and Jeanette own. The water is then pumped from the trailer to a second tank, where gravity takes over and the real work begins. Jason and Jeanette fill tray after tray with water, kinking the hose to stop the flow while arranging the full trays on tables throughout the salt house. The trays will sit in the heat however long it takes for the water to evaporate, leaving nothing but the salt behind.

The labor can be taxing, and that’s before the harvesting and the blending of salt with other ingredients even begins, but Jeanette and Jason delight in the work. After all, the chance to spend as much time together as possible is what led them to step into the business of making salt.

“Whatever business we set out on, it had to get us together,” Jason says. “That was the most important thing.”

“It feels great because we’re passionate about this,” Jeanette adds. “And it’s the first time we’ve gotten to do something creative together.”

The two met on a blind date in Asheville. At the time, Jeanette worked in public health, and Jason was in sales for an outdoor provisions company. They both traveled a lot, and they wanted to spend more time together. Jeanette’s sister lived in Seattle, and so the young couple set their wagons west. They made a life in the Northwest, forging successful careers and raising two young children, and they soon realized that they were both interested in food, the growing of it, the preparing of it, and, of course, the eating of it. They also began experimenting with various ways of using different kinds of salts in their cooking.

While they loved living in the Northwest, they began to feel hemmed in by their careers and schedules and missed the sense of community they’d felt in the South. Jeanette was born and raised in Decatur, Georgia, and Jason just outside of Washington, D.C.

“We wanted to live close to the water,” Jason says. When they moved to Wilmington a couple of years ago, they began to look for a shared business opportunity they could devote themselves to. They learned that Amanda Jacobs, the founder of Sea Love Sea Salt, was looking to sell her growing business. When they met with Amanda, Jeanette brought along a salt recipe she had developed back in Seattle. While there were other suitors who wanted to purchase the business, “No one else brought Amanda a salt,” Jeanette says.

Since purchasing the company, Jeanette and Jason have worked to develop new salts to add to a lineup that already includes citrus, Sriracha, rosemary, dill pickle and others. Two flavors they brought with them from their experiences in Seattle are herb and fennel, and they regularly test various salts at local farmers   markets in Wilmington, tracking the responses of their customers. They also have a thriving connection with numerous local restaurants and breweries, most of whom pride themselves on sourcing local products, as do Jason and Jeanette. Almost all their salts are flavored with North Carolina-grown produce.

Aside from developing new salts, Jeanette and Jason are planning to develop the land where the business sits. While it contains the salt house and a warehouse, they are building a hoop house to double their capacity — important during the winter, when the time it takes for water to evaporate goes from 10 days in the summer to as long as three weeks in the colder months, when days are shorter. They are planning to host farm-to-table meals featuring local chefs and artists, and are thinking of other creative ways to invite the community to this wooded, quiet piece of land.

Jason pours scoops of salt into fine mesh bags that he hangs from the ceiling, salt that could have begun on the other side of the world, now suspended from the rafters in rural North Carolina.

“People come here for the ocean,” he says. “This is giving them the chance to taste it.” OH

Wiley Cash is the Alumni Author-in-Residence at the University of North Carolina-Asheville. His new novel, When Ghosts Come Home, is available wherever books are sold.

In the Cards

Silly, sappy and sometimes recycled birthday greetings

By Maria Johnson

I just returned from a hunting trip.

I bagged some nice ones: A bear. A chicken. A dog. A couple of old ladies. A handful of little kids.

Yep, if there’s anything more enjoyable than shopping for funny birthday cards, I’d like to know about it.

I buy en masse, hitting several of my favorite racks in a single afternoon and stockpiling the cards in my desk drawer. I hope to avoid the dilemma I’ve faced too many times: Thinking I have the perfect card stashed away, then running to my office before heading out to a birthday celebration, only to find out that — oh, yeah — I gave that card to someone else.

At that point, I have no choice but to bend the sentiments of whatever cards I happen to have, literally writing around the printed messages. “Thank You” for inviting me to your party. “Heartfelt Sympathy” for people who haven’t aged as well as you have. “There’s Nothing Like a Baby Girl,” which is what your parents must have thought on the day you were born.

Even Christmas cards will do. “For God So Loved the World that He Gave His Only Begotten Son,” and much, much later — like, after electricity, but not too much after — you.

Not every birthday requires a card, thank goodness. I usually call my faraway pals for a long chat or text them a GIF — a short, repeating video clip — of something meaningful, like the Seinfeld gang happy dancing or a hamster stuffing cake into its cheeks or Raven Simone chewing gum and shifting her eyes.

In-person gatherings, however, require a card. Especially among women. Showing up to a girlfriend’s birthday party without a card is worse than — showing up to a girlfriend’s birthday gathering without a card.

We like to pass our cards around, so everyone can read them and say, “That’s cute.” Trust me, a sticky note doesn’t cut it, no matter how many exclamation points you put after Happy Birthday!!!!!

So, shopping ahead for cards is smart hedge. If you go the humorous route, there are a few motifs to choose from:

• Young children wearing adult clothing

• Women drinking wine

•
Old women conversing in talk balloons about memory loss
(see above)

• Animals that appear to have eaten an entire pizza or cake

• Animals wearing adult clothing

•
And the most popular theme in card-dom: Animals wearing sunglasses.

Recently, I listened to a podcast interview with humorist David Sedaris. The host asked him if he thought any subject was not funny. He said dogs in sunglasses. Which is funny. Because they are. Every animal — except a human — is funnier with sunglasses on. If you don’t believe me, pose your pet with sunglasses on, take a picture and text it to someone in your family. They will text you right back.

I use this tactic to stay in touch with our sons, especially if I know they’re not feeling well. I can text them — “Do you have a fever?” “Should you go to a doctor?” “Hello?”— all-day long. Crickets. But let me send a picture of our long-eared hound in aviators. The response is immediate.

Awww. Haha. Hearts.

At least I know their thumbs are healthy.

Cards with animals in sunglasses — reading glasses and goggles work, too — are safe for everyone, even mothers, and that’s saying a lot because your mom really doesn’t want a card that makes her laugh. She wants a card that says somewhere, under that mountain of unanswered texts, you love her.

Ditto your spouse. Funny is OK. But sincere is better.

My dad got this. He spent a lot of time picking out serious birthday cards. You know, the ones plastered with flowers or sunsets and written in curly script. “On the day you were born …” “I don’t say it often enough …” “Time has a way of . . .” It was pretty sappy stuff, which didn’t mean it wasn’t funny — because my dad insisted that you read his cards aloud. “That’s really good,” he’d say, beaming when you finished.

Sometimes, after you’d read all of your cards, he’d shuffle through the pile, fish out the one he had given you and clear his throat. “Let’s hear this again,” he’d saying, pausing after each line to give it proper dramatic weight.

One year, he gave my mom a card. She read it. He performed the encore. Something sounded familiar.

“Wait,” I said. “Didn’t you give her that one last year?”

He nodded yes.

“You bought the same card again?”

“No,” he said with a slight wag of the head.

“You pocketed last year’s card and re-gifted it just now?”

He nodded again, clearly pleased with himself. “I didn’t think I could find one that said it better.”

He was grinning as he slid the card into his lap.  OH

Maria Johnson is a contributing editor of O.Henry. Send comments — or images of animals wearing sunglasses — to ohenrymaria@gmail.com.

Capricorn (December 22 – January 19)

If you agree to disagree with a Capricorn, you may never get the goat off your leg. But if you can learn to appreciate this stubborn Earth sign’s somewhat forceful nature — and, perhaps, let them think they’re right — then you quickly will discover that their hearts are usually in the right place. Driven by passion, Capricorns aren’t afraid to speak their minds. When life gets a little spicy in the wake of the full moon, don’t poke the fire-breathing goat.

Tea leaf “fortunes” for the rest of you:

Aquarius (January 20 – February 18)

Bowie said it best: Turn and face the strange.

Pisces (February 19 – March 20)

Sure, martyrdom works. For now. But they’re onto you.

Aries (March 21 – April 19) 

Get your popcorn ready.

Taurus (April 20 – May 20) 

Easy, skipper. Smooth sailing entails the whole crew.   

Gemini (May 21 – June 20)

Ready for a miracle? Try listening.

Cancer (June 21 – July 22)

You’re the ringleader of your own spectacular. Dress the part.

Leo (July 23 – August 22) 

Either road will take you there.

Virgo (August 23 – September 22) 

My sources say no.

Libra (September 23 – October 22)

It’s OK to circle back. Not all journeys are linear.

Scorpio (October 23 – November 21)

Use your words.

Sagittarius (November 22 – December 21)

The stars are in your favor this month. Mostly.   OH

Zora Stellanova has been divining with tea leaves since Game of Thrones’ Starbucks cup mishap of 2019. While she’s not exactly a medium, she’s far from average. She lives in the N.C. foothills with her Sphynx cat, Lyla. 

Meet Veri Peri

Thinking about sprucing up your house? Hoping for a new look? Want to be way ahead of the curve for the spring High Point Furniture Market? The Pantone Color Institute can help. It recently created and introduced the Pantone Color of 2022, and — drum roll —it’s Veri Per (Pantone 17-3938), a dynamic periwinkle blue hue with a vivifying violet red undertone.

The institute’s director, Leatrice Eiseman, explains its importance in an unsettled time: “As we move into a world of unprecedented change, the selection of Very Peri brings a novel perspective and vision of the trusted and beloved blue color family. … [It] displays a spritely, joyous attitude and dynamic presence that encourages courageous creativity and imaginative expression.”

Star Power

This month, one of Broadway’s most celebrated actors kicks off this year’s UNCG Lecture and Concert Series. Kelli O’Hara takes the UNCG Auditorium stage Friday, January 14, to share her experiences on screen and stage.

The seven-time Tony Award nominee won the 2015 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical for her performance as Anna Leonowens in The King and I. Other Broadway highlights include Kiss Me Kate, The Bridges of Madison County, Nice Work If You Can Get It and South Pacific.

Television credits range from Sex & The City 2 and The Good Fight to Blue Bloods and N3mbers, to name a few.

Rise and ’Shine

Once nicknamed the “moonshine capital of the world,” Wilkes County is embracing — even celebrating — the ill-gotten gains of its past in North Wilkseboro Saturday, January 15, by hosting a free family-friendly event with food and beverages, local crafts, music — and of course — moonshine and stories. For more information visit
www.facebook.com/WilkesSpiritDay/

New at the Zoo

Ronan is not your average bear.

The 740-pound male grizzly is the newest resident of the North Carolina Zoo in Asheboro. Recently relocated from the Reid Park Zoo in Tucson, Arizona, the 9-year-old fellow seems to be adapting well to his new habitat in the North America continent area.

Since last summer, the grizzly bear habitat in Asheboro has remained empty, following the death of Tommo, a beloved, “amazing, goofy” dude that resided in the park for the 26 years.

“We are so excited to welcome Ronan to the zoo,” says Jay Stutz, the zoo’s curator of mammals. “He is settling in well and already building meaningful relationships with his keepers. We all look forward to the experiences that he will share with our guests and staff.”

Male grizzlies in the wild live about 22 years and weigh between 400 and 700 pounds.

Welcome to North Carolina, Ronan. We promise it’s cooler here than Tucson.

Return to Catfish Row

Grammy-winning songwriter and performer Rhiannon Giddens’ New Year’s gift to the Triad is bringing her musical talents home to the Greensboro Opera’s performance of Porgy and Bess. Composed by George Gershwin and his older brother, Ira, the opera revolves around Porgy, a poor, disabled Black man in Charleston, South Carolina, who desperately seeks to save Bess from a violent lover and a drug dealer. A love story, in other words, but the story is also about redemption and overcoming adversity. We can’t wait to hear Rhiannon and company’s take on such beloved songs as “It Ain’t Necessarily So,” “My Man’s Gone Now,” “Plenty o’ Nuttin’ ” and “Summertime.”

A native of Greensboro and an alumna of the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics, plus and a graduate of Oberlin Conservatory, Giddens is a founding member of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, a blues, country and old-time band in which she was lead singer and played the banjo and fiddle. In 2017, Giddens was awarded a MacArthur Fellow by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

Take a Hike

What better way to observe the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday — and a Day of Service — than to help clean up the messes left by others. Greensboro Parks & Recreation is sponsoring a hike on Monday, January 17, to collect litter along a popular 6–mile route. Participants should meet at the Piedmont Trail parking lot on Lake Brandt Road near the Lake Brandt Marina. (If you need directions, call the marina at (336) 373-3741). The stroll takes about three hours, so be sure to dress in layers and bring water to drink.

Ogi Sez

By Ogi Overman

OK, 2020 was a total bust, and 2021 didn’t come back to some semblance of life as we once knew it until around August. So, let’s pray to the gods of music or the deity of your choice that 2022 brings a full return to vaccinated and maskless normalcy. And for me, that means full concert venues, clubs, bars, restaurants, street fairs and music festivals. January was always a bit slow for major touring acts in the Before Times, and that seems to be the case now, but there still are plenty of quality shows to go around. So, let ’er rip.

• January 7, Blind Tiger: Like so many others, the pandemic wreaked havoc on the Camel City Yacht Club’s launch and touring plans. But they’ve set sail again hoping for smooth seas and sunny skies. Fronted by local legend Clay Howard, this is a cruise you don’t want to miss.

• January 21, Ramkat: Remember when country music stars actually dressed for gigs, wearing flamboyant, one-of-a-kind Nudie Rodeo suits and (thank you, Warren Zevon) perfect hair? Marty Stuart, bless his heart, is single-handedly keeping those days alive, both with his Fabulous Superlatives (don’t you love that name?) and his Nashville museum. Authentic twang at its most excellentest.

• January 22, Carolina Theatre: Bluegrass and Americana royalty right here, in the persons of Sam Bush, Mike Marshall and Edgar Meyer. They got together for one superb album, Short Trip Home, years ago and still occasionally tour together. And now they’ve turned the terrific trio into a quality quartet, adding Edgar’s son George on fiddle. The phrase “genre-bending” was invented to describe these guys.

• January 22, High Point Theatre: You get three shows in one when you go see Ben Vereen. He broke in on Broadway, starring in Jesus Christ Superstar and Pippin, for which he won a Tony. He is an exceptional tap dancer, hence the title of his tour, Steppin’ Out. But his voice is what most folks come for. Expect some of his many show tunes, as well as nods to Sinatra and his old pal Sammy Davis Jr.

• January 30, Carolina Theatre: As a sort of pseudo-musicologist, I fell in love some years ago with the music that preceded my birth. Being a boomer, that meant, of course, the Glenn Miller Orchestra. Oh yes, there were dozens of wonderful bands, but the indisputable leader was Glenn Miller. Thankfully, this incarnation of top-shelf players is keeping that era alive. I know I’ll be in the mood.

A Homeward Tail

Guilford entered my world unexpectedly. Unassumingly. The vulnerable, scraggly puppy needed a home as much as I did.

Nine years ago, I lived in South Carolina, desperately wanting to return to Greensboro.

A Guilford County native, I knew I needed to walk familiar ground, complain about the diabolical traffic on Battleground, rekindle friendships. The yearning consumed me. I vowed that if I ever moved back, I would never venture across the county line with more than, give or take, a 12-ounce bottle of water, a gallon of gas and $7 in change — all of which I probably already had in the bowels of my Honda.

But a seemingly unsurmountable obstacle stood my way. No one wanted to buy my house, which had been on the market for months. Ants weren’t even interested.

To worsen my homesickness, my sweet dog had just passed away.

So, when someone mentioned that a tragic fate awaited a litter of orphaned pups, I adopted a tiny, sickly ball of fur that barely could open his eyes. His pedigree was undetermined, but I’m pretty sure his mom was a mutt and dad — MIA.

I named him Guilford after the Guilford College area where the Friends had settled in the 1750s. I grew up in that neck of the woods. I wrecked my bicycle on New Garden Road, ate ice cream sundaes at Quaker Village and waded in Horse Pen Creek.

I hoped naming him after the first Baron of Guilford would signal to the universe I needed to return home.

Less than two weeks after Guilford’s adoption, I sold my house — and my new buddy and I headed north.

But Guilford didn’t mature into the prince of peace I had anticipated. What began as a quest for the salvation of an innocent 5-week-old dog dissolved into an exercise in abnormal psych. As his personality emerged, he grew more petulant than a 3-year-old determined to cross oncoming traffic. He frightened anyone within earshot with his bark. Acquaintances ranked him somewhere between Joseph Stalin and Al Capone. Minus their charming smiles.

If Guilford were human, he would refuse to use turn signals as some act of civil disobedience and brandish a weapon. (Thankfully, the rascal isn’t equipped with opposable thumbs. But he does have a healthy set of canines. See below.) The innocent soul I once was able to cradle in my hand had matured into a delinquent, though one that people wanted to pet because of his disproportionally large, perky ears and his seemingly sunny demeanor.

Because of his antisocial disposition, folks declared him a canine non grata — and justifiably.

Months ago, a friend stopped by while I was pet-sitting my brother’s dog. Guilford wasn’t happy with either interloper so, he bit my friend. On the thumb. Stitches. Infection. Repeat. In Guilford’s defense . . . never mind.

Under mandatory county quarantine and without a shred of remorse, Guilford was sentenced to doggie detention.

However contrary this seems, though, that 18-pound cauldron of sweetness and venom is my best friend. His temperament has cooled as his redemptive qualities emerged, and his companionship has remained constant.

Guilford and my friend brokered a peace, and the four-legged assailant now squeals with delight when he sees him.

Guilford loves exploring Greensboro, pulling at the end of his leash in search of mischief and his next victim. As for me, I have begun my dream job as editor of O.Henry. Guilford sits contentedly in my lap as I’m typing this column, and we are both happy to be home. 

Illustration by Jimmydog Design Group