Simple Life

SIMPLE LIFE

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A Spring Awakening

And a journey from darkness to light

By Jim Dodson

I celebrate April’s return every year because it’s the month that a divine awakening changed my life.

It was 1980. I was the senior writer of Atlanta Weekly, the Sunday magazine of the Journal-Constitution, the oldest newspaper magazine in the nation. It was probably the best writing gig in the South. Over the previous three years, I’d covered everything from presidential politics to murders in the “City Too Busy to Hate,” as Atlanta liked to promote itself in those days.

One minute I was interviewing a grand dragon of the Ku Klux Klan in Alabama, the next riding along with the Repo King of Atlanta as he repossessed cars in the city’s most dangerous federal housing project, a shotgun on the seat of his truck. I’d also written several pieces about young women from the South who were drawn to Atlanta’s bright lights only to wind up murdered or missing.

Looking back, though I didn’t realize it then, I was in search of an answer to a question that had no answer.

Three years before I snagged that job, Kristin, my girlfriend back home in North Carolina, was murdered in a botched holdup by three teenage boys at a Hickory steakhouse where she worked as the weekend hostess. I’d left Kristin on a beautiful October Sunday after making plans to get married and move with her to England, where she had a job as an understudy awaiting her in London’s West End.

The low point of my Atlanta odyssey came on a hot July night in 1979. I was working on a cover story about Bob Stivers, the city’s famous medical examiner, whose forensic sleuthing reportedly inspired the popular TV show Quincy. The week before that Saturday night, I’d watched half a dozen autopsies at the ME’s elbow, equally mesmerized and horrified. When Stivers invited me to ride along with the squad that picked up murder victims, I jumped at the chance. Saturday nights were particularly busy in the city that had recently been declared America’s “Murder Capital.”

My new fiancée, Hank Phillippi, was the nighttime weekend anchor at WSB-TV. We shared an old, brick house near the east-side entrance to Piedmont Park. Our weekend routine was to have a glass of wine and watch Saturday Night Live when Hank got home from the studio before midnight.  

On that fateful night, waiting for a call from Bob Stivers’ death crew, as I was standing in the darkness of our backyard, waiting for my dog, Magee, to do her business, I saw a car pull up beside our neighbor’s house. We were friendly with the Emory med students who lived there.

As I watched, a man emerged from the backseat of the car and calmly walked to our neighbor’s backdoor and knocked. A med student still in scrubs opened the door. There was a brief exchange of words, followed by two gunshots. The medical student collapsed on the ground. The assailant bolted for the running car, which sped away.

By the time I reached his side, a young woman from the house was screaming hysterically. I asked her to fetch me a couple towels and call 911.

Fortunately, at that moment, Hank arrived home. She took charge and phoned the police as I cradled the wounded man in my lap, attempting to keep him conscious. He died 15 minutes before cops arrived. “We get drug hits like this every weekend,” the cop said.

I chose not to follow the victim’s body down to the city morgue.

The next morning, though, as I was walking Magee, I heard a chapel bell in the distance softly chiming “Blessed Be the Tie That Binds,” one of my favorite hymns since childhood. Tears filled my eyes.

As Hank slept in, I fetched a cup of coffee, sat on our front steps taking stock of my life, and suddenly realized what was missing. I hadn’t been to church in five years.

I got dressed and went to services at the historic All Saints’ Episcopal Church downtown, famous for feeding the homeless and never locking its front doors. The rector, a wonderful man named Harry Pritchett, gave a powerful sermon about how God finds us in the darkness when we least expect it. It felt like he — or maybe God himself — was speaking directly to me.

Not only did I begin attending All Saints’ regularly, but also made a decision in favor of writing stories that enriched life rather than revealed its dark side. I even set my mind on attending seminary, until a wise old Bishop from Alabama named Bill Stough, the editor of the Bishop’s Fund for World Relief, convinced me to follow a “ministry closer to your heart,” as he put it. “You are a born writer,” he said. “You can serve the Lord better by writing about life than becoming a parish priest.”

Not long after that harrowing summer night, Hank and I called off our engagement, but have remained dear friends for more than 45 years.

As for me, that following April while working on a sample story about youth baseball tryouts, I ventured over to a rundown ball field in my midtown neighborhood, where a desperate league director convinced me to take on the coach-less Orioles. They were a wild bunch, many of whom lived in Federal housing. This was during the peak days of the “Missing and Murdered” crisis affecting Atlanta’s Black teens. I made a deal with my team’s families to drive them home after all games and practices.

I also made a deal with my rambunctious “Birds”: If they played hard and behaved like gentlemen, I would buy them all milkshakes after winning games.

They took the offer to heart. We won the Midtown League Championship in a romp that season, which convinced me to stick around Atlanta for one more year. We went undefeated for a second time. It only cost me 200–300 milkshakes.

I never wrote another crime story again.

Crazy as it sounds, almost a year to the day later, I woke on an April night to find Kristin standing beside my bed. She looked radiant. I thought I must be dreaming, but she was so lifelike, especially when she smiled and spoke. “Pook,” she said, using her pet name for me, “it’s time for you to leave here and go north. That’s where you’ll find what you are looking for. I’ll always love you.”

Days later, I resigned from the magazine, turned down what might have been a dream job in Washington, and headed for a trout stream in Vermont.

God, Kristin and my baseball team found me in the darkness when I least expected it.

It’s been a wonderful life ever since.

Chaos Theory

CHAOS THEORY

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Partners in Grime

A bit of a fixer-upper

By Cassie Bustamante

The summer I turned 7, my family moved from small-town Upstate New York to Wilbraham, a small-town in Western Massachusetts. Picture quaint, 200-year-old homes, churches surrounded by old, stone walls and even a very old, red schoolhouse-turned abode. Everywhere you looked, the streets bubbled over with New England charm. But our new house? Not so much. It bubbled over with ick.

My mother and I made the trek across states together, leaving my father behind to cheer on my older brother, Dana, who was playing in a little league tournament. I hadn’t yet seen any photos of the new digs, but I’ve always thrived on change and the opportunity to meet new people. And, this time, we were moving to be closer to family. We’d be in the same town as both sets of grandparents and close to all sorts of cousins, aunts and uncles.

In fact, Wilbraham was the town where my parents met as high school students with backyards abutting one another. Back then, my dad wore his white-blonde hair in a 1970s swoop that cascaded in front of his eyes, suiting his shy personality. My mom, a petite brunette with a Farrah Fawcett ’do, was gregarious and often teacher’s pet. Come to think of it, a lot like me. It wasn’t until they both enrolled at Springfield College in the fall of 1974 that sparks flew.

All along the drive, I chattered away excitedly, driving Mom bonkers. The anticipation came to a jarring halt when we pulled into a driveway. This could not be it. I prayed that this was some kind of joke and, surely, Mom was about to shout, “Gotcha!” In front of me stood a dilapidated, brown 1964 Colonial with red shutters — the worst color combination known to man — and an attached two-car garage. The paint was blistered and peeling, rot everywhere. This was it? I wept.

When my brother arrived a week later, he had the same reaction. In fact, he packed a suitcase and said he was going to ride his bike back to New York and live with friends. I wondered how he’d manage the suitcase while pedaling, but I never witnessed that level of stunt mastery because he stayed.

Beyond the front door, the family room featured the inevitable ’60s faux-bois paneled walls and linoleum flooring that vaguely resembled bricks. The tacky residue left behind by a rug adhesive attracted the fur of our golden retriever, Butterscotch. In fact, every surface seemed sticky and dirty.

But it was as if Mom and Dad could see into a crystal ball, which magically showed them something I couldn’t see — the spark of potential underneath all that grime. They rolled up their sleeves and got to work. In sections, they replaced wooden siding along with rotten windows. They repainted the exterior a soft gray and gave it new barn-red shutters, a color combo that still remains in place today, according to my Google search, almost 40 years later. I recall many days spent outside, flipping over rocks in search of salamanders, while Dad sat atop the house with his cousins, hammering down a new roof.

Grampa, Dad’s dad, was a self-made entrepreneur who owned a wholesale hardware company, and thus understood the world of home renovation. He’d appear from time to time to “help” Dad with weekend warrior projects. But not until he’d sat on the porch munching on a donut and sipping coffee, followed by playing basketball with me and my brother in the driveway. And then, “Oh, would you look at that? I’ve got to go if I am going to make my tee time!” Maybe he took it too easy, but we all look back on those moments with laughter. Cancer took his life way too soon just a couple years later when he was just 59.

On weekends when repairs weren’t being made, Bob Vila’s voice rang through the kitchen while I ate my grilled peanut butter sandwich, This Old House playing on our wooden console television set in the nearby family room. YouTube and TikTok were still decades away from being created, kids. My parents had to learn about DIY through reading books and checking the Sunday paper’s TV schedule to make sure they didn’t miss their favorite DIY shows.

Mom, an avid gardener who knew just what would thrive where, planted flowers aplenty to create a lush and vibrant yard. Lilac bushes lined our white picket fence. Just outside the back door, an herb garden’s fragrance wafted through our kitchen window all summer long. We teasingly called it the “Herb”— with a hard “H” — garden, naming it after the endearing, out-of-shape man in one of Mom’s Jane Fonda exercise videos.

My parents poured everything — blood, sweat, tears and what little money they had — into making that hideous monstrosity a jewel of the neighborhood. As a 6-year-old, I hadn’t understood the possibility, but as a 46-year-old I’ve learned something about compromise and seeking out hidden potential.

Over the 21 years that my husband, Chris, and I have been married, we’ve bought a few well-worn homes. And every one, we’ve made our own with paint and — like my parents — blood, sweat, tears and all the money we could muster. When we arrived in Greensboro in January 2019, the 1960s Starmount Forest ranch home we moved into was far from a looker, but it ticked the boxes for a family of five. Though our new house was not nearly as neglected as my childhood home in New England, my own kids felt a little like I had the day I arrived in Wilbraham with my mom. The magic simply wasn’t there. But, thanks to my parents, I’ve realized that magic is something you create through a combination of creativity, hard work and collaboration that includes the kids. And as the months have turned into years, we’ve turned a house into a home, one that our two older kiddos will look forward to returning to next fall when they’re both away at college. That is, until they have their own fixer upper to make their own.

Wandering Billy

WANDERING BILLY

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Playing the Market

For over 30 years, Ron C. Curlee II has stretched his artistic limits

By Billy Ingram

“All great change in America begins at the dinner table.” — Ronald Reagan

In 1994, Ron C. Curlee II was the first intriguingly talented individual I met in our fair city after relocating mere days before from Los Angeles. I’d wandered into Babylon, an infamous rave club located on South Elm in the long-dead heart of downtown Greensboro. Babylon was notorious for shoveling underaged kids through its doors. For all I knew, Ron may have fallen into that category.

As it happens, that den of iniquity was sponsoring an art opening of Ron’s Crimes Against Nature series — enormous canvases featuring, for the era, bold, lurid and graphic imagery of exactly what the work’s title suggests. We instantly hit it off and, since then, it has always been a pleasure in those too rare instances when our divergent paths cross; laughter is always sure to follow, sparked by his gregarious personality, somehow both serious and fun.

I marvel that today Ron remains on the cutting edge, a key component of his career being his three decades participating in the High Point Market as a painter of extraordinarily original abstracts, as well as a designer and merchandiser.

Accomplished in both art and design, his career has had an internal reach. In addition to dozens of local shows and commissions, his artwork has been featured in most of the well-known furniture showrooms, including Highland House, Harden, Francesco Molon, Excelsior, Century, Hickory Hill and Drexel Heritage.

This area has grown significantly since the mid-1990s, when the impact that Market made all across the Triad was seismic. Families back then were renting out their homes to attendees for $1,500 a week, due to lack of available hotel rooms. Venturing out to dinner, even in Greensboro, became a challenge during those two-week periods, the nicer restaurants being predictably overbooked. On those occasions when I would dine out with my parents during April and October Market, generally at some out-of-the-way steakhouse such as Jordan’s on Church Street, we’d amuse ourselves by observing nearby tables where sales reps were expense accounting the night away with obvious ladies of the evening who flocked from near and far to service this influx of out-of-towners.

Ron grew up in Lenoir and attended the University of Georgia’s studies abroad program, where he studied painting in Italy. But it was actually the lure of the Market that brought him to Greensboro in the 1990s. I recently caught up with him in his richly appointed, downtown Greensboro home-studio duplex (thestudioandgallery.square.site) to look back on some of his more colorful experiences at High Point Market.

Following the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, Paul Burrell, her former butler and one-time footman for Queen Elizabeth II, began licensing his name for various upscale goods that included furniture. “I was director of visual merchandising for an upholstery company that paid to use Burrell’s name,” Ron tells me. “So we made up all the stories behind his collection that was [supposedly] based on his travels with Princess Diana.”

This was following the “uppity” butler’s trial for stealing various personal items from the beloved Princess and after Prince Harry publicly accused him of “milking” his mother’s death in Burrell’s scandalous book, A Royal Duty. “I traveled around England with him,” Ron recalls. “People either loved him because they wanted to know about Princess Diana or they despised him because he had risen above his station. So it was very awkward.” At gallery openings and tea parties, Burrell would regale audiences with stories about how Diana’s boys would sit on chairs like the one on display or the way Princess Diana would relax on a sofa resembling that model. “And we wrote all of that for him.”

On one occasion, while imbibing a bit heavily on a rather empty stomach, Ron recalls, “I may have told [Burrell] that he was just the front man who didn’t know anything, that I was doing everything while he was getting all the credit.” The next morning, he says, “They told me Paul didn’t have anything to say and just up and left.” Not long after, Ron got wind that Burrell was talking with a friend in New York who was getting him drunk and secretly recording their conversation about the Queen and Princess Margaret, then selling it to a tabloid for a million dollars. “And I was like, why didn’t I think of that?!?”

Ron has also rubbed elbows with Hollywood royalty and recalls a furniture collection introduced at Market that he thought was immediately fabulous and very successful. “The Humphrey Bogart Collection from Thomasville,” he replies. “I have pieces from that line in my living room. It was like Old Hollywood, a little deco with lots of unique woods, veneers and different applications. A mixture of skins and veneers like shagreen shark skin, tiger-eye maple, zebra wood.” Bogart and Lauren Bacall’s son, Stephen, had input into the designs and made an appearance in 2002 at the presentation party.

Was there a ruinous collection he was saddled with showcasing that was an absolute disaster? “At Fine Furniture Design, they’re no longer in the United States,” Ron says with a laugh. “They were high end and introduced a collection that was entirely covered in mirrors. They had a mirrored poster bed, entertainment cabinet, occasional end tables, cocktail tables and a dining table that sat 12.” Ron was flabbergasted. “I was just like, what the hell is this? It was so ostentatious, so over the top and it didn’t sell.” Upon reflection, the manufacturer blamed Ron for the line’s failure. “I was told that I didn’t paint the rooms the right color, I didn’t do the right presentation. I was thinking, my accessories should have been razor blades and straws!”

Collections are generally only offered for a year or so and then quietly disappear. “They can last longer but Market is fashion driven,” Ron points out. “Everybody wants something new. So you may add a few pieces and continue a collection for a couple seasons, maybe a year and a half or two years. But you want to be fashion forward.” To that end, designers tend to lean into Pantone’s Color of the Year — in 2025, it’s Mocha Mouse. “So buyers are looking at mocha fabrics; yarns will be dyed that, too. Last year it was Peach Fuzz.”

Both during and outside of Market, folks generally approach Ron when they’re looking for artwork to complete a room. “I’m known for large abstracts, so I can build up to 10 feet by 10 feet,” he says. “At Market, they’re not going to offer something custom. It’s going to be what’s on the wall and buyers will order 10 of them or whatever. But all of my creations are going to be original and custom.”

For the next few weeks, it’s once more into the breach for Ron C. Curlee II: “So I’ll merchandise several showrooms and then, when they’re completed, I head to the Suites at Market Square and put my own showroom together to sell my artwork.” He’s been showing at Market Square for about four years now. “Sometimes I have other artists or product designers in my space but I’m not going to sell a container full of merchandise. A lot of my clients are designers, so they’ll come to market, see what I have and what I’ve done and then commission artwork in specific sizes, specific colors. Seeing me at Market is a reminder that I’m still here.”

Buffalo Presbyterian Church

BUFFALO PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH

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Buffalo Presbyterian Church

From generation to generation, Greensboro's pioneer church lives on

By Jim Dodson   •   Photographs by John Gessner

On a mild winter morning, welcome hints of spring in the air, the pews at historic Buffalo Presbyterian Church are nearly full for a Sunday service celebrating Rev. Brian Marsh’s second anniversary. Remarkably, Marsh is only the 17th minister in 269 years to occupy Buffalo’s pulpit since the church was organized by a band of Scots-Irish settlers in 1756. Such longevity speaks volumes about the faith and continuity of a church that predates the establishment of Guilford County by 15 years, the United States of America by 20 years, and Greensboro itself by 52 years. 

“I sometimes have to fight my emotions when I think about Buffalo’s historical importance to this community, a place where so many families of Greensboro have worshipped for centuries,” says Thomas McKnight, an eighth-generation member whose ancestor wrote the deed for the land on which the church sits. “Through the ups and downs of its history, good times and bad, literally war and peace, Buffalo Church has been a spiritual home where God’s word is preached and all are welcome.”

“I think that’s been the comforting message of Buffalo Church since its earliest days,” agrees Vinnie Gordy, another eighth-generation member who was baptized, grew up and was married in the church. “The settlers who created this church came out of a dangerous wilderness to make this their spiritual home. And that’s exactly what Buffalo Church is to many of us today — a home where we belong, sharing the love of Christ and the word of the Bible.”

Buffalo’s founders were liberty-loving, Scots-Irish immigrants who followed the Great Wagon Road from southern Pennsylvania to new lives in a wilderness area then known as the Nottingham Settlement, formed in 1750. It originally consisted of 33 plots of land purchased from Lord John Carteret, the second Earl of Granville, the last of North Carolina’s Lord Proprietors. The church today sits at the heart of the original settlement, which was framed by Horsepen Creek to the west, South Buffalo Creek to the east, Reedy Fork to the north and Muddy Creek to the south. Lore holds that the church, upon its establishment, took its name from the creek that bisects the modern city of Greensboro.

As I learned while researching my forthcoming book on the Great Wagon Road, America’s Scots-Irish Presbyterians were arguably the most determined travelers of the Wagon Road and the backbone of the country’s westward expansion, hardy souls who built more churches and log cabin schools than any other religious group in the Southern backcountry. They also brought with them a fierce sense of independence and a God-given talent for spreading the Gospels, making music, and educating their young. As Jim Webb writes in his 2004 bestseller Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America, they were also in the vanguard of fighting for liberty from the American Revolution onward.

If you want to know how old a church is, the saying goes, visit its graveyard.

Testament to Buffalo Church’s powerful influence on the history of this region is a peaceful 6-acre cemetery that’s home to one of the largest catalpa trees in North Carolina and an estimated 1,200 graves, including the remains of at least 145 soldiers, many of whom fought in both the Battle of Alamance and the Revolutionary War. Men from the church, in fact, have fought and died in all American wars with exception of one — the Spanish-American War. Many of their gravestones have simply vanished over time.

“As a result, there are many more graves out there than we’ve identified,” says Pam Brady, a seventh-generation member who has researched the cemetery for many years. “That’s because many of the original graves were marked with wooden crosses or stones that simply disappeared over the years.” The cemetery’s earliest headstone identifies the grave of Mary Starrett, who was the wife of Benjamin Starrett and was buried in 1775.

Still, a stroll among the hundreds of gravestones that remain intact, however, reads like an honor roll of Greensboro’s pioneer names  — Gillespie, Forbes, Donnell, McKnight, Forbis, Dick, Lindsay, McNary, Albright, Mebane and Rankin.

Brady once set out to find the grave of her ancestor, William Rankin, but was only able to locate a faded stone belonging to his wife, Jean. “By the time I did my research on where he might have been buried — presumably near his wife — and got back to the cemetery, even her stone had disappeared,” she says with a laugh, adding that at least 20 current church members have ancestors from the 1700s — not all soldiers — buried in Buffalo’s historic cemetery. “We feel blessed to worship where our ancestors worshiped,” she adds, “because it connects us to the rich history of Guilford County and the creation of Greensboro in a very personal way. I like to think that Buffalo Church is to Guilford County what Bruton Parish Church is to Colonial Williamsburg and the North Church to the city of Boston.”

The most celebrated grave site exists directly behind the sanctuary, a family plot framed by century-old boxwoods. It belongs to Rachel and David Caldwell, a Princeton theological graduate who was called to serve as Buffalo’s first pastor in 1765, sharing pulpit duties with Buffalo’s sister congregation just east of what is now Greensboro at Alamance Presbyterian Church for the next 55 years.

Two years after Caldwell arrived, he established what became known as Dr. Caldwell’s Log College, a theological and classical academy for young men. His students included future N.C. governors, members of Congress and at least 50 ministers. He later became a trustee of Liberty Hall, the precursor of the University of North Carolina.

Today, Caldwell’s Log College Site — home to his farm, well-preserved Federal-style house (dating from 1781) and influential school — are part of David Caldwell Historic Park, a National Historic Site that shares space with the Tanger Family Bicentennial Gardens. Come spring, there is probably no more visited public grounds in Greensboro.

In addition to Caldwell’s reputation as a spellbinding pastor, due to a shortage of physicians in the region, he acquired medical books from Philadelphia and became a self-taught doctor, which came in handy during his years as a key patriot leader in the Revolutionary War. According to records, he was present at the Battle of Alamance during the Regulator insurrection of May 16, 1771, and urged his flocks to volunteer during the American Revolution and the War of 1812. His farm also became a prime staging ground for American troops prior to the Battle of Guilford Courthouse, the major turning point of the war.

Rev. Caldwell died in August 1824. His wife, Rachel Craighead Caldwell, daughter of a Presbyterian firebrand patriot leader named Alexander Craighead, followed him to the grave one year later.

Just three years later, in 1827, Buffalo’s congregation replaced a previous pair of wooden sanctuaries — one of which was said to hold as many as 1,000 worshippers — with a striking brick sanctuary that is believed to be the first brick church in this part of North Carolina.

Seventh-generation member Clyde Albright’s great-great grandfather, Jacob Albright, built the sanctuary from bricks made on the property. 

Just under a century later, a classical portico was added to the entrance of the sanctuary and a choir loft was constructed. Not long afterwards, an education building named for David Caldwell was built on the west side of the church. A similar structure dedicated to Rachel Caldwell was eventually added to the east side of the sanctuary, completing the evolution of the church campus.

To celebrate Buffalo Church’s bicentennial in 1956, the church underwent a major renovation and sanctuary expansion. Clyde Albright’s grandfather, Lonnie Albright Sr., showed Boren Brick where to dig the clay from the original site (reportedly near Friendly Center) used for the bricks of the expanded sanctuary.

The highlight of the celebration was a dramatic two-night outdoor pageant called Let Freedom Ring, featuring a cast and staging crew of more than 75 members of the church, several professional actors and the choirs of Buffalo and Alamance churches. The play, presented over a trio of outdoor stages, told the story of Buffalo’s extraordinary history, from early days before the church’s founding to the achievement of America’s independence. “It was quite an exciting production,” remembers Vinnie Gordy. “There was great music, and cannons firing and lots of fireworks. I was age 12 and sang in the children’s choir. My older sister, Magie Fishburne, however, had a major role as Hannah Meeks, and my aunt, Helen Andrew, played Rachel Caldwell. There was a large turnout both nights from the community. I don’t believe anyone had ever seen anything quite like it.”  

Longtime members also point out that, like many older churches, Buffalo Church has seen its ups and downs over the decades. “By 2015,” says McKnight, “we were a church with a lot of older members, many who were dying out. Before COVID hit, in fact, we were down to about 68 regularly worshipping members — probably the lowest point in the church’s history.”

Ironically, he adds, COVID proved to be the unexpected salvation. When churches everywhere were asked to shut down for the duration, Buffalo’s leadership opted to remain open, employing extreme spacing throughout its handsome sanctuary. “When the word got out that we were holding services as usual, our membership returned, along with a lot of newcomers from other churches. It may be proof that God works in mysterious ways,” McKnight adds with a smile. “But the growth has continued regularly since that time.”

Today, the congregation numbers over 200 and continues to slowly grow, a timely revival for a congregation some affectionately call the “Pioneer Church of Greensboro.”

At a recent Saturday morning men’s prayer breakfast, a record turnout of more than 45 included nine newcomers who’ve recently come Buffalo’s way from other churches.

“I think they are drawn to a church where the fellowship is genuine and the preaching is firmly Bible-focused,” reflects Albright. “When I sit in the choir loft and remember where my parents and grandparents once sat, looking out over a sanctuary that is now almost full every Sunday, I think about the generations of people who were born, got married and passed their lives through this wonderful old church. I think our ancestors would be very pleased to see new faces and a church family that is growing again.”

Three decades ago, Albright — a lawyer with a gift for woodworking — took the remains of an 80-year-old white oak that met its demise through a lightning strike during a storm and made a rugged wooden cross. He wrapped it in chicken wire and planted in front of the church portico during Easter week. Last November, the same salvaged wood was used to build a larger cross, which hangs from the organ pipes in the sanctuary.

On Easter Sunday, members adorn the original cross he built with flowers before a sunrise service and congregation breakfast.

“It’s become a very popular tradition at Buffalo Church,” confirms Albright. “As the sun comes up, I think that old cross covered with spring flowers expresses our gratitude for the return of spring and the glory of Jesus Christ’s resurrection.”

Architectural Details We Cannot Resist

ARCHITECTURAL DETAILS WE CANNOT RESIST

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ARCHITECTURAL DETAILS
WE CANNOT RESIST

(Hint: Porches rock our worlds)

By Cynthia Adams •  Photographs by Bert and Becky VanderVeen

My dad stood on the brakes whenever he spied a house featuring grand, white columns and a generous porch sweeping across the front, his dusty pickup sputtering to a stop. He stopped, fully fixated, before puttering on, often headed to an antiques auction.

“Just beautiful,” he’d sigh, shaking his head in awe.

He most admired “grand old gals,” as he called the finest homes with slate roofs, copper gutters, working shutters and Juliet balconies. He would loop through historic neighborhoods, excitedly pointing and teaching me to recognize and value those details, too. Years later, I learned he had dismantled and salvaged materials from a ramshackle house to build our first family home just before my birth, proving just how much of a house guy he was — or, at least, proving his thrifty resourcefulness.

As for me, I was captivated by the interior details of homes. What treasures were to be found inside?

And I was anything but practical. 

With sparkling glass door knobs and a staircase to nowhere, even cobwebbing, cracking plaster and a dining-room floor that listed so much it gave you vertigo didn’t discourage my desire for a dodgy Westerwood home. It also possessed gorgeous molding (if an unfortunate, teensy fireplace) and a butler’s pantry — and a surprisingly serviceable floor plan featuring nooks and crannies galore. It quickly won the hearts of two neophyte homebuyers.

Old house lovers get it. 

Perhaps it takes preservationists and architectural buffs to fathom the irrational, deep affection historic homes and buildings inspire. And most can quickly tell you what particular details make their pulse quicken with pleasure — and why. They have an internal catalog of favorite things — from window details to arches. According to home blogs, they are particularly smitten by original details, especially French doors with mullions, substantial moldings and casings, ceiling details and medallions, and wall paneling.

So, I began asking some of my favorite old-house lovers, many of whom just so happen to have preservation credentials, to share some of their favorite architectural details up and down Greensboro’s streets and avenues.

Take Katherine Rowe, who lives in a classic brick two-story in the leafy and grand neighborhood of Sunset Hills and discovered a passion for historic homes while coming of age in Salisbury, where there is a thriving preservation movement. 

Proof? She served as an officer of Preservation Greensboro’s Board of Directors and dedicated 21 years volunteering with its Architectural Salvage program.

Rowe currently serves as a commissioner with the Historic Preservation Commission of Greensboro (HPCG). Two years ago, she helped judge the Community Appearance Awards of Winston-Salem and Forsyth County. Vocationally, she also does “small remodels and design work.”

Architecture is a topic she delightedly calls “fun!” 

If you ask what her favorite architectural detail is, Rowe hesitates to narrow it to one. Soon, she’s tripping over things she finds riveting. Firstly, she mentions the purple glass exterior sconces and cast concrete door surround at the old Masonic Temple on West Market Street “because they are so much themselves; bold, colorful. Meant to look a bit imposing, but they’re just adorable.” 

Rowe has difficulty choosing a single architectural detail that most delights. Then she discusses the elaborate cast-concrete Art Deco molding around windows “at 100 S. Eugene, next to the sheriff’s office, which are delightful because they are such a surprise. Detailed. A lot of work, and I appreciate the thought behind those windows, both from the architect and the guy who made them.”

Later she emails a list of admired architectural details around town, noting:

The miles of slate roof at Holy Trinity; graceful, symmetrical classical architecture at Temple Emanuel; arches and garages doors at the now defunct Central Fire Station on North Greene; robust arches at a private residence at 703 Fifth Ave. in Dunleath; the restored Gatekeeper’s Cottage (originally part of Green Hill Cemetery, now Carolina Home Partners) on Wharton Street; public spaces that are inspirational, such as War Memorial Stadium and East White Oak Community Center.

“There’s lots of good public architecture, right?” Rowe notes. “Charles Hartmann was responsible for much of it,” she adds, ticking off his greatest hits: “Grimsley High, Dudley High, the original Jefferson-Pilot building with Thomas Jefferson bust and Country Club Condos on Elm Street.”

On a personal note, she sends an email later, saying she was initially drawn to her home’s long sunroom with its three walls of windows and red quarry tile floor. “It reminded me of my great-grandmother’s sunroom in Albemarle; hers had jalousie windows, tropical barkcloth upholstery and bright, floral houseplants. Charming and cheerful to a child.”

Now that their sunroom is insulated, she and her husband, Jeri, spend weekend afternoons there reading or watching television. “And I bring in pots of geraniums and clover to overwinter on tables set up in front of two of the window walls. Which seems a bit full circle, don’t you think?”

Fellow volunteer, writer and preservationist David Arneke has also served with HPCG. Like Rowe, he has been an officer of Preservation Greensboro. He currently serves on the nonprofit Preservation Greensboro Development Fund.

Since 2017, he has written and edited piedmonthistorichomes.com, which serves as a comprehensive guide to “the most historic, notable and distinctive 18th-, 19th- and early- to mid-20th-century homes now for sale in North Carolina’s Piedmont Triad region.”

Notably, Arneke knows about succumbing to old house charms. For many years, he has lived in a circa 1900 College Hill home with Betty Work. Lured by certain charming architectural details when he first saw their future house, one distinction eclipsed all others.

“The feature that really grabbed us was the scalloped frieze boards that go all the way around the house. They were hard to even see when we bought the house because the entire exterior was painted beige — every last detail.” According to a November 1997 Greensboro News & Record interview, the couple took three years deliberating the perfect exterior paint colors.

“Also, inside the house, the back stairs,” he adds. “Neither of us had ever lived in a house with stairs in the front and in the back. Such a novelty for us.”

Having long chronicled features of older homes, he admires the columns on the Bumpas-Troy House, saying their size and prominence “make them grand and spectacular and unlike anything else in the neighborhood.” He muses, “It must have been quite a sight when it was built in 1847, out in the woods beyond the edge of town with no other houses around it.”

Arneke discusses a Dunleath home, which turns out to be the same one that Rowe had mentioned, notable for its “wonderfully distinctive front porch. I don’t remember seeing another one like it in Greensboro.”

Arneke recalls a striking historic feature of a Fisher Park house.

“The swooping roofline on 1101 Virginia Ave. . . . The whole house is remarkable, but that roofline, along with the portico, give it a whimsical look that you just don’t see very often. I get the feeling someone had fun designing that house.”

Fellow preservationist Deborah Kaufman, who lives in Sedgefield and now serves as an at-large commissioner on HPCG, says, “I absolutely love the front porches of older homes. They always make me nostalgic, especially if there’s a porch swing. I’m reminded of my childhood at my great-grandparents’ house.”

She qualifies details.

“Brick porch flooring and wrought iron rails just don’t give me the same warm feeling as those creaky wooden floors and white railings.” 

Even Greensboro City planner and preservationist Mike Cowhig, a Fisher Park resident, agrees with Arneke and Kaufman on the topic of porches, particularly when it comes to what’s directly under foot. In a word, Cowhig finds the commonplace touchingly affecting — and often overlooked. 

“There’s nothing like a well-preserved set of wood front porch steps and a tongue-and-groove porch floor,” he says. 

“Because they are exposed to the weather, [wooden] steps are often replaced with masonry steps, so they are increasingly rare. The treads are usually bullnose with a rounded edge like stair treads. Victorian era steps can have very decorative hand railings.”

As for historic tongue-and-groove porch floors? A yawping hole opened like a sinkhole in that Westerwood’s tongue-and-groove porch — just as I stepped out for the mail during our first week of residence.

Said porch’s beguiling Chippendale-style railings were rotting and much of the German siding cladding the entire house was also rotten. Only the concrete steps were not.

The next house that captivated us sold itself within minutes, even lacking a requisite front porch. But inside, it had handmade doors, brass knobs and gorgeous, deep windows (with wavy glass in the muntins!) offering a park view. Built in 1926 by former Greensboro mayor Ralph Lewis, we considered it “modern.” Sadly, the gorgeous slate roof was developing leaks, eventually requiring replacement a few years ago. As did the heating, air conditioning and rotting Tuscan columns at the front entry and side porch. 

But those windows with wavy glass? They survived, and they still slay me.

I was willing to overlook almost anything for its many sets of French doors (three!) and remarkably — how to express this to a saner person? — calming energy.  Laugh if you want, but the plaster walls inside our old house feel like a safe, sheltering place. 

Especially so if you forget the resident ghost.

Almanac April 2025

ALMANAC

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Almanac April 2025

By Ashley Walshe

April is a drift of dandelions, cheerful and bright.

Can you hear them giggling? Listen. It helps if you slip off your shoes.

Somehow, bare feet in the cool grass, you can access new frequencies: the whir of tiny wings, the swelling of tender buds, the rhythmic flow of nectar.

Wiggle your toes. Breathe into your belly. Surrender to the urge to lie down.

Yes, that’s better. Draped across the softening earth, the sun on your skin is medicinal. You close your eyes, brush fingertips across feathery blossoms, let your inner child run wild.

Perceive the world through the eyes of a dandelion. Anticipate the tickle of bee feet, the tender kiss of mourning cloak, the ecstasy of thunder and rain.

Are you giggling yet?

Listen.

The song of spring rises in all directions.

In the distance, a chorus of peepers rouses the burgeoning woods. Wet and trembling, a swallowtail clings to its chrysalis, pumping crumpled wings at the speed of grace. A bluebird whistles tu-a-wee. 

Open your eyes. Turn your gaze toward the flowering dogwood, the mighty tulip, the small, ambrosial apple tree. Everywhere you look, spring spills forth.

The dandelions are chattering now. Turn a cartwheel, one squeals. Dance for rain, blurts another. Pick me, whispers a third. 

Smiling, you reach for a fat, yellow blossom, pluck the stem, tuck the flower behind your ear. Eyes closed once more, you drift into blissful reverie. Among this sea of sprightly yellow orbs, you drink in the playful hum of this budding season, let the song revive your every cell.

Floriography

The Victorians used tussie-mussies (nosegays) to express their true feelings. Apple blossoms and dogwood were code for I like you. Purple violets murmured true love. Tulips? Well, that would depend on the color, of course.

While the language of flowers has withered in these less-than-modest times, we can’t help but ascribe meaning. Surely, every gifted flower says, I’m thinking of you. But what is it that you hear in the presence of flame azalea, redbud, cherry blossom? What do you glean from the iris and bluebell?

The Great Egg Hunt

There, nestled in the branches of dogwood, sugar maple, hawthorn and pine; in gutters, rain boots and dense shrubs; within the cavities of dead and living trees: eggs, eggs, beautiful eggs. Creamy white ones, speckled brown (chickadee, cardinal and nuthatch). Bright and muted blue ones (robin and bluebird). Pale green with rust-colored blotches (mockingbird). And guess who’s out searching for them? Opossums, snakes, skunks, racoons, crows and jays.

Spring is as harsh as it is lovely. And, yet, this circle of life is indeed what makes each spark of creation all the more precious.

Poem April 2025

POEM APRIL 2025

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Greedy

The catbird is pecking away

at two ripe tomatoes.

I wave my hands and shout,

My tomatoes! as though 

I’d produced them

from my breasts or belly.

 

The catbird aerializes

on the tomato cage,

jabbing and jabbing the red fruit.

I have more on the counter

that I won’t eat before they rot,

or that I’ll give away.

 

It’s unseemly, this stinginess,

a memory of not-enough,

the necessity of preserving

a crop from rabbits and deer,

the otherwise marvelous

round-backed bugs, grasshoppers

flaring red underwings,

 

or birds like this one,

gray as a civil servant,

an actuary of ripeness,

that tilts its head to eye the fruit

and flaunts its rusty bottom

in salute.

— Valerie Nieman

Animal Tales

ANIMAL TALES

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I Know Not Where I Go

Lessons from the lodge

By Eric Schaefer

An oriole sings to me from the top of a hickory, and I rush to put out orange slices and pots of grape jelly. But he won’t stay. Every spring, he flies off as if he has some important place to go. “Stay a while,” I say. “There is no hurry.” But he’s off to an unknown destination. I can’t stay much longer either.

We bought the place because of the lake. The house was a wreck. We hauled out a dozen soiled mattresses, a pickup load of beer cans and various detritus. The work was hard, but there was always the lake. We took lots of breaks to lounge and try to find the cool places where the springs came up from the bottom. One day, an engineer from the state came around and inspected the dam. He said the trees on the back side of the dam should not have been allowed to grow up. Their roots would undermine the dam’s integrity, but cutting them down now might be worse because rotting roots were more dangerous. Telling us what should have happened before we arrived was not helpful, but he was right. The dam grew weaker and more vulnerable each year but held on until the remnants of a hurricane backed up water, and it gave up in a sudden, catastrophic collapse. Three acres of water, fish, turtles and flotsam went downstream overnight. In the morning, there was nothing but mud. 

Since fixing the dam was prohibitively expensive, we were forced to watch nature reclaim the land. Initially, it was depressing, but nature didn’t waste time providing us with a show. Grasses and shrubs were quick to sprout, and it wasn’t long before willows, sycamores and sweet gums covered the old lake bed. We traded kingfishers and hooded mergansers for common yellow throats and a chat or two who liked the new growth. Then, one morning, walking the stream that runs down the middle of the old lake bed, I came across a stick that had been stripped of its bark. 

Beavers are often considered a nuisance, but, in my old lake bed, they were welcome. It took them just a few days to construct their first dam. While working, they lived in a burrow in the stream bank and came out to work crepuscularly. I thought their first dam should have been located further downstream, but my wife said, “Don’t argue with the engineers. They’ve been doing this for a long time.”

She’s right. Castor canadensis has been shaping the landscape for 7 million years or so. They not only build dams and lodges, but, once water backs up enough, they dredge channels in their new pond so they can swim deep enough to keep out of reach of predators. When they cut down a tree that is too big to drag, they either cut it up or make a canal to float the wood to where they want it.

I wanted to watch the endeavor, so I started going down to the stream early in the morning and evening. The first animal I encountered slapped his tail on the water hard enough to sound like a gunshot, making me nearly jump out of my boots. But  I knew the pond wasn’t big enough for him to hide for long, so I sat down to wait. Sure enough, he stuck his nose out of the water in a minute or two. He lay motionless with just his nose above water, looking me over until he decided I wasn’t a threat, and then he glided across his pond to where there was a freshly cut willow branch. He sat on his haunches in the shallow water, held the stick in his front paws and started eating the bark off the stick like you would eat corn on the cob. 

I began to visit him regularly in the evening. Sometimes, I’d bring a snack and eat with him. He never gave that warning tail slap again. He’d pause when I’d arrive —  I fancy he was making sure it was only me — then he’d go about his business, unperturbed.  Sometimes, a more petite beaver, perhaps his girlfriend, would show up. They built an impressive mound of sticks on the pond’s bank, and I could imagine its cozy interior, where I hoped they would be raising kits in the winter. Beavers are laid back about their accommodations. They have been known to share their lodge with otters, muskrats and other wetland neighbors. If I had been smaller and a little younger, I might have tried to visit them in their home.

Tragedy struck one day in the form of another storm that raised the water enough to wash away the beaver lodge and completely destroy their dam. I don’t know where they ended up; I haven’t seen them again. The lake bed is now filled with willow stabs and brambles. They didn’t like the sycamores much and left them pretty much alone, so the area has taken a new turn. I’d like to watch and see what develops, but my wife and I can’t take care of the place anymore. Can’t keep the house from falling down or the yard from turning into a jungle. We can’t keep enough wood to keep the fire going. We’ll be moving on soon. I know not where, but there will be a different assortment of birds, perhaps an unfamiliar flowering shrub might catch my eye, or a butterfly new to me will land on the bench where I’ve come to sit and watch. I might even land where the oriole makes his home.

From Central Park to Fisher Park

FROM CENTRAL PARK TO FISHER PARK

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From Central Park to Fisher Park

A big-city transplant brings verve to a 100-year-old bungalow

By Maria Johnson
Photographs by Amy Freeman

About a dozen years ago, Richard Peterson was walking down Greensboro’s North Eugene Street where it feathers from the commercial glassiness of downtown into the residential coziness of Fisher Park, when he saw a 90-some-year-old lady.

She was faded and outdated.

But she had class.

And good bones.

Peterson, once a jet-setting New York hair stylist with A-list clients, saw what she could be. So he did what he usually does: He made the most of her attributes, which, in this case, included a deep front porch, cedar shakes and rosy-brick walls stacked in a Flemish bond pattern, with alternating long and short sides in every course.

In the decade-plus since he bought the compact cottage, Peterson has artfully used tones from that brick palette — ranging from salmon to russet — to splash the property, inside and out, with blushing accents balanced by calming greens.

Now, especially in the spring, when the home’s English-flavored garden froths with blossoms inside the peaked waves of a boxwood hedge, the old Craftsman dame, petite though she may be at 1,000 square feet, still turns heads.

Her show stopper: the crown of pink Eden roses climbing above her front porch.

“When the roses are in bloom, people stop and take pictures,” Peterson says proudly. “If I’m outside, they tell me how beautiful the garden is and how much they enjoy seeing it.”

An anonymous passer-by once dropped off a pack of note cards with a picture of the house on the front.

“I think it’s a testament to the fact that the community around here is very thoughtful,” he says. “It’s a great place to live.”

Fifteen years a Piedmonter, Peterson still looks the part of Manhattanite with his oval glasses, shock of Warhol-white hair, low-cut Chuck Taylor sneakers, and jeans, henleys and hoodies in every conceivable shade of black.

Recently, he walked into a Greensboro furniture store.

“You must be from New York,” a saleswoman said.

How Peterson landed in Greensboro is as interesting as the transformation of his cottage from weary to whimsical.

He recounts some of his earliest memories as a child growing up outside Cleveland, Ohio, in the 1950s and ’60s. His father took the family for Sunday drives through swanky Shaker Heights, where the captains of shipping, steel and banking lived in grand homes.

Peterson wondered what life was like behind those walls.

His life was modest by comparison. His father owned a gas station. His mother was a housewife. His maternal grandfather, a Hungarian immigrant, tended a flower-and-vegetable garden behind the house that the two families shared.

Peterson was about 8 when his family moved to their own home, but he never forgot the flowers, partly because his grandfather incubated cuttings under Mason jars and literally passed on the beauty to the next generation.

When Peterson was 16, he went to work for a florist in Shaker Heights.

He accompanied the shop’s owner to the homes of wealthy clients to gather pretty vases, take them to the shop, fill them with botanicals and deliver them back to their stately homes. Peterson had found a way into the mansions that wowed him as a kid, and he liked what he saw.

“I drove my family crazy because all of a sudden I wanted Waterford and Baccarat crystal and sterling silver,” he says.

Soon, Peterson was arranging flowers.

Acting on the encouragement of a life partner who was a hairdresser, Peterson diverted his flair for composition into beauty school, where he learned how to snip, color and texture hair. He and his partner opened several salons in Cleveland.

“We were extremely successful,” Peterson says.

The couple moved to New York City in the late ’80s after Peterson snared a job with the late Kenneth Battelle, aka Mr. Kenneth, the darling of New York society women who wanted the cachet of being shorn by the man who is often described as the first celebrity hairdresser.

Mr. Kenneth created Jackie Kennedy’s iconic bouffant. Marilyn Monroe, Brooke Astor, Audrey Hepburn, Babe Paley, Katherine Graham, Nancy Kissinger, Joan Rivers and other notable noggins sat in his chair — but only for a cut.

Mr. Kenneth passed his wet-headed clients to his employees for styling. Peterson dried, combed, teased and lacquered his way into a loyal following.

He styled and schmoozed with Pamela Harriman, who was once married to Rudolph Churchill, the son of Sir Winston. Two husbands later, she was hitched to Averell Harriman, the U.S. Secretary of Commerce under President Harry Truman.

Peterson groomed the heads of many women affixed to heads of state.

When First Lady Betty Ford was in town, Peterson did her ’do. She told him about an Italian restaurant that she and the President liked. Peterson said that he’d love to take a friend there.

Ford made a reservation for them. When dessert was finished, Peterson called for the check. He was told that the dinner was compliments of Betty and Jerry Ford.

When the Crown Princess of Sweden was in New York and needed her hair styled, Peterson reported to her suite at the Waldorf Astoria; Mr. Kenneth’s salon was inside the hotel.

At the suite, Peterson was greeted by a man who led him to a room where he could work. Peterson directed the man to move some furniture so that the princess could sit in the best light.

After the princess was coiffed, her father walked into the room, and it dawned on Peterson who had helped him.

“I had the King of Sweden moving furniture around for me,” he says, dissolving into laughter.

With Mr. Kenneth’s blessing, Peterson worked part-time as a personal hairdresser to the CEO of two apparel companies. He traveled the world on her private jet.

“I was feeling all big-shot-like,” says Peterson. “It was a shock the first time I had to fly coach.” Except for a year-long stint with a salon in Palm Beach, Fla., Peterson camped in New York. He and his partner lived in an Upper West Side apartment overlooking Central Park, in the same building where actors Al Pacino and Andie MacDowell lived.

But, after a while, Peterson says, the magnets of love and work in the big city lost their pull. He started looking for a place to move solo. Someplace green, where he could have a yard. Someplace like his boyhood home, only warmer.

It just so happened that a friend, another New York stylist, flew to Greensboro every six weeks to style the hair of a local socialite he’d met in the Big Apple. Soon, he was doing the hair of several of her Greensboro friends. Peterson tagged along to help on one of those trips. During the visit, Peterson and his friend attended a drag bingo event in downtown Greensboro.

“The majority of the audience was straight people, and everyone was having a good time,” Peterson says. “It told me that this place was open and accepting. I thought, I could easily live here.”

A few phone calls later, he had a job at an upscale salon on North Eugene Street. He rented a room on Summit Avenue, watched way too much HGTV and set his sights on restoring an older home.

“I can’t tell you how many power tools I bought,” he says.

He haunted salvage stores, demo sites and antique shops, squirreling away hardscape for his someday yard: a wrought iron arch, a double metal gate, a white picket fence.

One day, as he walked down North Eugene, an aging swan caught his eye.

The sign out front said, “For Sale or Rent.”

Peterson rented with an option to buy. Then he opened his wallet.

He had the hardwood floors refinished and stained dark before he moved in.

Later, with deed in hand, he shelled out for a new roof, water heater, HVAC system and basement waterproofing.

The financial hits kept coming.

Inside the cottage, wood paneling peeled away from the walls. Under that, the original plaster flaked away. And under that, a brick wall crumbled. It was one of two side-by-side brick walls separated by a gap, an energy-saving style known as cavity construction, common in 1924, the year house was built.

Peterson had the inner brick wall repointed, hung with drywall and painted bright white.

He added floor-to-ceiling windows in the sunroom, where he often watches TV with his Labrador retriever, Sammy,

Waves of sunset and emerald tones — in the form of houseplants, artwork and punchy artifacts — carry the eye throughout the house. See a mannequin sheathed in pink sequins in the front room; a large metal pig in front of a Louis XVI repro desk in the middle room; and flying pigs perched in the sunroom.

The glee continues in the backyard with curvaceous rose-colored balusters around porches — including a small wedge that Peterson calls his “Juliet Balcony” — fan-back garden chairs and  faux flamingos.

The blushing accents pop against vivid green islands of artificial turf, which Peterson installed so his dog could go outside without stamping the house with muddy paw prints.

The rest of the backyard resembles a wooded hallway. With help, Peterson sculpted fieldstone paths and planting beds down the length. He decked the hall with river birches, azaleas, ligustrum, distylium and ferns.

The walkway ends with a project in progress, an empty landscape-block pond that Peterson envisions catching a tumbling waterfall.

“My wish is to be in a forest,” he says.

For the front yard, his wish is to be in the Cotswolds.

The metal gate, which he found at the now-shuttered Mary’s Antiques soon after moving here, is flanked by concrete orbs given to him by a client. She imported the balls from England.

“I can’t imagine what it cost to ship them,” Peterson says.

He added salvaged porch railings, balusters and a swing.

“No Southern porch is complete without a swing,” he says.

He filled the slatted seat with faux pillows and a throw that he made with spray foam, chicken wire, concrete slurry and paint. He spiked the arrangement with a gazing ball and contained the arrangement with a chain. The spectacle was made for eyes, not fannies.

Ditto the garden tucked between hedge and porch. In season, the space bubbles with a fountain that provides mood music for ferns, roses, azaleas, Asiatic jasmine, coleus, zinnias, impatiens, verbena and whatever else strikes Peterson’s fancy.

He bought a small pickup truck after moving to Greensboro, and he finds it difficult to pass a nursery without loading the bed with more plants.

“I was better off when I had a car, and not a truck, because now I’m not restricted,” he says.

He makes no apologies for his devotion to natural beauty, though.

“If you look at a flower — the color, the shape, the fragrance, everything — it’s a miracle,” he says.

He lets his observation hang before seeking a response.

“Isn’t it?” he finally asks.

The voice belongs not to a jaded urbanite, but to an awestruck kid.

Birdwatch

BIRDWATCH

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Long Trek North

Louisiana waterthrush leads the way

By Susan Campbell

In early spring, birdwatchers such as myself are eager to spot the first returning migrants of the season. These are northbound birds that have spent the cooler months far to our south, in Central or South America. There, the living is easy, with plentiful food and a mild climate. But as the days begin to lengthen, these birds begin their return flight to the breeding grounds. Many may fly both day and night as the urgency of their mission increases. Hormone levels drive them to make their way swiftly to their natal area. Some return to the exact patch of woods, marsh or lake where they themselves hatched.

One of the earliest to return here in central North Carolina is the Louisiana waterthrush. A small, drab warbler, it is far more likely to be heard than seen at first. Its plumage is streaky brown and white. Birds can be recognized by their prominent broad white eyebrows and pink legs. As its name implies, the species prefers wet habitat, being at home along streams and rivers where it not only feeds in the trees, but along banks and around rocks at the water’s edge.

In the spring, Louisiana waterthrushes will call or sing as they move from place to place. As with so many species, the male’s vocalizing serves not only to attract a mate, but to establish territory. They have a loud, melodic song that carries well over the sound of moving water. The species’ call note, too, is a high volume “chip” that is easy to pick up in thick vegetation or above a gurgling stream.

Louisiana waterthrushes are insectivorous and so will consume any fly, midge or beetle that it sees. Also, waterthrushes will pick hatching aquatic insects such as mayflies or stoneflies out of the water. Individuals may wade in the shallows as they forage, making short jabs at potential prey items.

After pairs find one another and begin to raise the next generation of waterthrushes, they become virtually silent. This no doubt enables them to protect their nesting site and their young from would-be predators. Nests are built on or near the ground, making them relatively vulnerable to disturbance. Secretive behavior also reduces the chances that they will be parasitized by brown-headed cowbirds, which are known to seek out open cup nests such as those made by waterthrushes to deposit a single egg. The resulting nestling will be unwittingly cared for by waterthrush parents to the detriment of their own young.

Being one of the earliest warblers to return in the early spring, they are also likely to disperse in early summer after their young leave the nest. They may return to their Central American wintering grounds by the end of July. If you are fortunate enough to encounter a Louisiana waterthrush in the weeks to come, enjoy it because it is not likely to be around for very long.