Tag: 2018

Scents and Sensibility

The loss of smell brings an unexpected gift

By Bridgette A. Lacy

Maybe I should have taken more time to smell the fragrant rosemary in my yard. Or I should have soaked in my almond-scented bubble bath more often. Perhaps, I should have savored the sweetness of my Uncle Jack’s red roses instead of assuming they would always be there for me.

Nineteen years ago, when I lost my sense of smell, my ability to relish those simple pleasures went away. I never thought that at 37 years old, my olfactory nerve would be stolen by a benign brain tumor the size of a tennis ball.

Even when my neurosurgeon told me that losing my ability to smell was one of the side effects of brain surgery, the reality of what that meant didn’t sink in. How could it? After all, I was facing life or death.

Before the tumor — and the surgery that saved, but forever changed — my life, I was a smell-centered person. Smells resonated with me. They had the ability to set my mood or even shape my attitude about ordinary, everyday activities. A soak in that aromatic bath soothed me at the end of a long day.
A sip of orange, cinnamon-flavored tea calmed me in the evening. The sensuous waft of the lavender growing in my front yard delighted me as I rocked back and forth on the porch. I appreciated the world so much more, in part through my nostrils.

At first, I thought I had survived the surgery with my sense of smell intact. I even complained to a nurse that my ICU room stank. Phantom odors, I guess.

I returned home from the hospital in October 1999 after five-and-a-half hours of surgery. I tried to recover and return to my old routine while also adjusting to the loss of sight in my right eye. It took me awhile to understand why my pot roasts burned to a crisp in the oven. I had always used the aroma floating through the house as a sign the roast was close to done. Sometimes my mother would visit to find a banana or some other fruit rotting on the countertop that I had forgotten about.

I didn’t truly realize I couldn’t smell until I received two gift baskets that included scented candles, a fragrant bubble bath and soap. As I sat in a chair, a friend commented on the wonderful aroma of one of the candles. She said it smelled like an autumn day. I inhaled to find no scent of anything under my nose. Nothing.

I ran into the kitchen and opened a bottle of Lysol. Nothing.

I ran outside and snipped a piece of rosemary. Nothing.

I was crushed as the realization of what this meant pressed upon me like the weight of a barbell.

At first, I hid the gift baskets in a closet. I couldn’t bear to see them and risk being reminded of what I was missing. I shoved them behind the door and tried not to think about them.

Months later, when my scalp began to heal from the trauma and incisions of surgery, I realized I couldn’t even get my typical natural high from the hints of coconut and honey in my freshly-washed hair. Shampooing my hair had always been a reassuring, sensory delight. Somehow, it just made me feel better. My aunt would often say she knew when I was at my mother’s house visiting because she could smell my shampoo in the air. Now, that was gone too.

After all that had happened to me, I couldn’t even sniff my way through recovery. It was hard knowing I couldn’t smell my own body. I was changed. It was devastating but I knew I had to find ways to cope with the loss.

It took time, but eventually, I finally mustered the courage to retrieve the contents of those gift baskets. I needed the closet space, but also I was determined not to let perfectly good lavender-scented body wash go to waste. Even if I couldn’t enjoy the benefits of their aroma, I still wanted to use them. I am a practical soul at heart.

I started to remember how much I loved it when people commented on how nice I smelled, whether it was from a scented soap layered with a matching lotion or a tiny dab of White Linen perfume behind my ear. The kind words from others about my personal fragrance became the ultimate compliment. I liked that family, friends and colleagues appreciated that about me even though the same experience was unfortunately lost to me. And so, I happily put the gift scents and soaps to good use as they were originally intended.

The hardest part of moving about the world without a sense of smell is explaining my loss to people. It just doesn’t seem to register to most that such a condition may even exist. In the course of any given week, some unsuspecting person may say: “Smell this. Ooh, that smells good, doesn’t it?” The same people are pretty shocked when I reveal that scent does not register with me. Yes, it is a little awkward. However, my loss of smell has actually forced me to relish and rely on my remaining senses.

I cherish the fact that I can still taste. Bitter, sweet, salt and tart still delight my tongue. My love of good food and my affinity for sharing it with others inspired me to write my first cookbook. Sunday Dinner, a Savor the South Cookbook from UNC Press, published in September 2015, was a triumph for me. It’s been very well-received. (Editor’s note: It was a finalist for the Pat Conroy Cookbook Prize awarded by the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance.)

I set out to make Sunday Dinner a life-affirming celebration of recipes, as well as a tribute to the value of meals shared and prepared with those you love. It highlights some of my most endearing memories, many of them intricately and lovingly tied to smells and thoughts of home.

The recipes call to mind my time spent in the garden and kitchen with my maternal grandparents. When I was young, I spent many a Sunday afternoon taking in the familiar smell and sizzle of Grandma frying chicken and the sight of Papa’s Nilla Wafer-brown pound cake cooling on the back porch. His cakes always released their own distinct, irresistible aroma that filled the air.

When I’m standing in my own kitchen recreating these time-honored dishes I grew up with, I sometimes think about my sense of smell, or rather the lack of it. As quickly as those thoughts appear, I redirect them to focus on the loved ones who originally created these meals and how much my family continues to influence me in and out of the kitchen.

As the years have passed, every once in a while, I experience a smell memory. It’s a curious thing. Once, in a grocery store, while walking past a display of country ham in sealed vacuum packs, I remembered the smell of country ham frying in a pan. It was so real I could practically taste it. Another time, driving home from a day spent with a male friend and his mother, I suddenly felt like I could smell spring in the air. The car windows were down and I remembered how the scents of that season came rushing in with the crisp smell of freshly-cut grass combined with the sweetness of one of my Tropicana, long-stemmed roses. These smell memories come flooding back with such crystal clarity, I almost feel like I really did smell something.

When that happens, I’m not mad. I’m not upset. I just remind myself that while that part of me is gone, so much more remains. Then, I simply and resolutely smile, take a very deep breath and thank God.

Come íní Get It!

The following dishes are one of many evocative of home and family:

Mamaís Meaty
Crab Cakes

I request my mother’s crab cakes almost every time I return to my childhood home. These meaty crab cakes flavored with Old Bay Seasoning are far better than any I’ve had at a restaurant. They are crunchy on the outside from the cornmeal and moist on the inside. My mother serves them on Martin’s potato rolls with potato salad. There will be no leftovers with these. In fact, get to the table fast. These won’t last.

Makes 8 servings

1 pound fresh jumbo lump or lump crabmeat

1 celery stalk, finely chopped

1⁄2 medium white onion, finely chopped

1⁄2 green bell pepper, finely chopped

2 tablespoons Hellmann’s mayonnaise

1 teaspoon Old Bay Seasoning, or more, to taste

1⁄3 cup Italian-seasoned bread crumbs

Cornmeal for dredging

2 cups vegetable oil (more or less, depending on the size of your skillet)

Place the crabmeat in a large bowl. Remove the cartilage (lump crabmeat doesn’t have much). Add the celery, onion, green pepper, mayonnaise, Old Bay, and bread crumbs and stir together gently with your hands so as not to break up the crab too much. Add more mayonnaise if the mixture looks too dry.

Shape the mixture into eight patties about the size of the palm of your hand. If you are cooking the crab cakes immediately, dredge them in the cornmeal. If not, you can store the crabmeat mixture in a covered container in the refrigerator until ready to cook (up to 2 hours) and dredge them just before cooking.

Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat until it shimmers. Don’t use too much oil; it should reach only halfway up the side of the crab cakes. Gently place the crab cakes in the pan and fry on one side until browned, about 2–3 minutes. Carefully flip over the crab cakes and fry them on the other side until they are golden brown. Drain the cakes on a paper towel and transfer them to a warm platter. Serve with your preferred sauce.

NOTE * Buy the crabmeat the day of or the day before cooking because fresh crabmeat perishes quickly. Jumbo lump or lump crabmeat makes for the best crab cakes. The meat is pricey, but it’s worth it for this special meal.

Estherís Summer
Potato Salad

My mother started making potato salad when she was a girl. The oldest of four children, she made it Sunday after church and would make enough to fill the large vegetable compartment at the bottom of the refrigerator. Her father, my beloved Papa, a blue-collar worker, often carried the potato salad in a mayonnaise jar for his lunch. My mother was a Moore, and many Moore family gatherings were marked by this classic summer salad. “My love of potato salad came from watching my aunt Shirley make it and smelling it in my grandmother’s kitchen,” she says. The scent of fresh-cut celery, onions and pickles drew her closer to the bowl. “We always ate it when it wasn’t ice cold. That’s why I like it today when it’s just made.”

Makes 6-8 servings

6 medium white potatoes

1 cup chopped celery

1 white onion, chopped

1⁄2 cup pimentos

5–6 sweet pickles, chopped

3 hard-boiled eggs, grated

5 tablespoons Hellman’s mayonnaise

2 teaspoons prepared yellow mustard

2 teaspoons cider vinegar

1 teaspoon sugar

Salt and black pepper, to taste

Paprika for garnish

Wash and peel the potatoes and cut them in small, uniform chunks. Put the potatoes in a pot and cover them with water. Boil until fork-tender, about 20–25 minutes. Drain the potatoes in a colander and let cool, about 30 minutes or so. You want them warm but not hot.

Transfer the potatoes to a large bowl and add the celery, onions, pimentos and pickles.

In a separate bowl, combine the grated eggs, mayonnaise, mustard, vinegar, and sugar. Taste it. Adjust the seasonings to your taste.

Gently combine this mixture with the potato salad. Season with salt and pepper. Sprinkle with paprika and serve. OH

Bridgette A. Lacy served as a longtime features and food writer for The News & Observer in Raleigh. She is also a contributor to The Carolina Table: North Carolina Writers on Food.

True South

Father’s Day

A daughter’s tribute

By Susan Kelly

When I was 7, my father would stroll through the den on Sunday evenings where I was rapt before Lassie, anxious for Timmy’s fate in the well, or the barn, or the field. My father would pause, then say, “Watch: Lassie is going to pull on that rope (or apron string, or gate latch) and everything will turn out all right.” “How did you know?” I demanded afterward, when Timmy was safely rescued. “Because,” he’d say, “I write this stuff.”

When I was 9, my sleeping dog snapped at a neighbor’s child who reached to pat him, and my father gave the dog away. I never forgave him, and he suffered for it.

When I was 11, had a horseback riding accident, and had to have a kidney removed, my father said, “Do not worry your pretty little head. My pal Bynum Hunter lost a kidney in a sledding accident when he was your age, and he’s just fine.” (Bynum lived to be 92.)

When I was 12, and began parting my long hair down the middle, my father said, “You should part your hair on the side.” “Why?” I asked. It was 1967; everyone was parting their hair down the middle. “Because,” my father said, “a middle part makes your nose look bigger.” When I laughed at that, or some other pronouncement he made, he’d say, “You know why you’re laughing? Because I’m right.”

When I was 17, worrying how I’d know when I met the man I wanted to marry, my father said, “You’ll know. When you can barely breathe, can’t stand to be apart from someone for a single minute, you’ll know.”

When I was 19, coming to Greensboro for basketball tournaments and debutante parties, my father would say, “Why not drop by and see Nan?” — my glamorous Greensboro grandmother, who lived in a miniature castle on Kemp Road filled with untouchables. I never dropped by, and he never asked if I did. I hope he forgave me.

When I was 21, I called long distance, sobbing, summoning my father to the phone from a cocktail party because the man I was in love with seemed to be uncertain about our future. “It’s time to fish or cut bait,” my father said. (He fished.)

He was a son of the South, a Greensboro kid, whose own father died when my father was at boarding school. So when textile magnate Spencer Love told him to go into textiles, and a job would be waiting for him, my father went to N.C. State. Frat boy and varsity swimmer, he stayed faithful to “Cow College,” as he put it, even in a family sea of Tar Heels. “Ah,” he’d say, as I packed the car after a visit home, impatient to return to Chapel Hill, “back to the womb.”

For five seasons a year (summer, fall, winter, resort, spring) he went to New York Monday through Thursday, always returning with a present: a Steiff animal from FAO Schwarz, a Broadway soundtrack album (My Fair Lady, Oklahoma!, South Pacific), or a wondrous Surprise Ball, countless yards of crepe paper wound tightly around trinkets at its core. When friends from school visited, he’d admire whatever they were wearing, ask, “You pay retail for that?” and examine the collar label. They adored him.

He loved bananas, drank Schlitz and Scotch, and every summer, reread A Summer Place, by Sloan Wilson. He peppered his speech with Yiddish from his time in the “rag trade” or “the dress business” — oy vey — and with lines from movies and songs. “Listen, Mack,” he’d begin a sentence, or, “All this and heaven, too,” when I was elated. “Looks like we made it!” he’d sing out from Barry Manilow, over a triumph, and when sorrow struck, “This too shall pass,” he’d tell me. “Fool’s names, as in fool’s faces, always appear in public places,” he’d remark at the sight of an overpass or bench layered in graffiti. He brooked no backtalk. “Don’t give me that thousand-yard stare,” he’d say during an argument. “These proceedings are over. Period.” Sternness included shaming. “He cannot tell you he’s thirsty,” my father said when he came home one evening and found the dog’s empty water bowl. “It’s a dumb animal.” “Dumb” meaning helpless, dependent entirely upon me.

My father taught me to draw “Kilroy Was Here” cartoons without lifting the pencil from the page. He could waterski and whistle, do the jitterbug and the camel walk and a backflip like nobody’s business. I never heard him argue with my mother. I never heard him utter a swear word. He refused to wear a seatbelt because he refused to let the government tell him what to do, and he dropped his subscription to the Greensboro Daily News the day the paper dropped the “Dick Tracy” comic strip. He refused to buy me a pair of Wallabees because he thought they were Communist shoes, but when I found a three-ring bikini in Seventeen that could only be found in New York, he moved heaven and Earth to get it for me.

Protector. Adviser. Jokester. Teacher. Nurturer. Molder. Thirty years on, for a death that came too soon, here’s my eulogy, finally.

Happy Father’s Day, Daddy. OH

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

2018 Department True South

The Omnivorous Reader

Triumphant Return

Frazier is back with a new historical novel that reads like poetry

By D.G. Martin

Charles Frazier’s blockbuster first novel, Cold Mountain, marked its 20th anniversary last year. It won the National Book Award in 1997 and became a popular and Academy Award-winning film starring Nicole Kidman, Jude Law and Renée Zellweger. From Cold Mountain and the books that followed, Thirteen Moons and Nightwoods, Frazier gained recognition as North Carolina’s most admired writer of literary fiction since Thomas Wolfe.

Frazier’s many fans celebrated the April release of his latest novel, Varina, based on the life of Confederate President Jefferson Davis’ wife. But, because his most recent previous novel, Nightwoods, had come out in 2011, they wondered why he had made them wait so long. The simple answer: Frazier refuses to work fast. Every word of every chapter of every one of his four books was reviewed, rewritten, replaced and restored by him to make the final product just right. It’s that process that makes Varina a book so full of rich and lovely prose it could pass for poetry. And well worth the wait.

Because Varina is historical fiction, Frazier faced a challenge similar to the one Wiley Cash encountered in his recent book, The Last Ballad. Writing about a real person — textile union activist Ella May Wiggins in Cash’s case or Varina Davis in Frazier’s book — limits an author’s freedom to create and imagine without limits. The facts of history set firm and solid boundaries.

On the other hand, those real historical facts provide the framework within which Cash and Frazier, both, have succeeded in developing interesting and believable characters. Varina takes us back to the 1800s and the Civil War, a period it shares with Cold Mountain and Thirteen Moons. The central character of the new book is Varina Howell Davis, until now an obscure Civil War footnote. Frazier refers to her as “V.”

He builds V’s story around an unusual fact. While living in Richmond as first lady of the Confederacy, she took in a young mixed race boy she called Jimmie. She raised him alongside her own children. At the end of the Civil War, Union troops took 6-year-old Jimmie away from V, and she never learned what happened to him.

Frazier begins his story 40 years later at a resort-spa-hotel-hospital in Saratoga Springs, New York, where V is residing. James Blake, a light-skinned, middle-aged African-American, has read about Jimmie. His memories are very dim, but he begins to think he might be that same Jimmie and sets out to visit V at Saratoga Springs.

When Blake calls on V at the hotel, she is suspicious, having been the victim of various con artists who attempted to exploit her fame. But something clicks. “She works at remembrance, looks harder at Blake’s broad forehead, brown skin, curling hair graying at the temples. She tries to cast back four decades to the war.”

Blake visits V for several Sundays, and Frazier builds his story on the growing friendship and the memories they share. During the course of Blake’s visits, V remembers her teenage years in Natchez, Mississippi; her courtship and marriage to Davis; life on his plantation while Davis is often away in military service or politics; living in Washington as wife of a U.S. senator and Cabinet official; being the first lady of the Confederacy; and her post-Civil War life when she becomes friends with the widow of Ulysses Grant and writes a column for a New York newspaper.

These are important subplots, but the book’s most compelling action develops in V’s flight from Richmond when it falls to Union troops at the end of the Civil War. In the book’s second chapter, V and Blake begin to recall their journey southward. As V prepares to leave Richmond on the train, Davis tells her she would be coming back soon because “General Lee would find a way.” But Lee does not find a way this time.

V’s family, including Jimmie, servants and Confederate officials, travel to Charlotte, where an angry mob confronts them at the rail station. Evading the mob there, they “traveled southwest down springtime Carolina roads, red mud and pale leaves on poplar trees only big as the tip of your little finger, a green haze at the tree line. They fled like a band of Gypsies — a ragged little caravan of saddle horses and wagons with hay and horse feed and a sort of kitchen wagon and another for baggage. Two leftover battlefield ambulances for those not a-saddle. The band comprised a white woman, a black woman, five children, and a dwindling supply of white men — which V called Noah’s animals, because as soon as they realized the war was truly lost, they began departing two by two.”

Their goal is escape to Florida and then Havana.

Supplies have shrunk and their money has become worthless. Rumors circulate that their caravan has a hoard of gold from the Confederate treasury and that there will be a big reward for their capture.

Frazier writes, “In delusion, bounty hunters surely rode hard behind faces, dark in the shadows of deep hat brims, daylight striking nothing but jawbones and chin grizzle, dirty necks, and once-white shirt collars banded with extrusions of their own amber grease.”

Like Inman’s trek toward home in Cold Mountain, V and her companions confront adventure and terror at almost every stop.

In Georgia, low on food and soaking wet, the group finds refuge in a seemingly deserted plantation house. As they settle in, two or three families of formerly enslaved people appear, accompanied by the son of their former owner, Elgin, a “white boy, who grew less beard than the fuzz on a mullein leaf.”

Elgin sasses and threatens two former Confederate naval cadets, Bristol and Ryland, who are accompanying V’s group. He blames them for losing the war.

Ryland responds in kind, “You’ve not ever worn a uniform or killed anybody, and you’re not going to start now. Have you even had your first drink of liquor?”

Ryland and Bristol laugh when the boy reaches into his pants and pulls out a Derringer pistol and points it at Ryland.

“And then Elgin twitched a finger, almost a nervous impulse, and an awful instant of time later, Ryland was gone for good.”

Frazier writes that Ryland had been transformed in a matter of seconds “to being a dead pile of meat and bones and gristle without a spark. Three or four swings of the pendulum and he was all gone.”

Instantly Bristol guns down Elgin. Before moving on, V’s group and the former slaves bury Elgin and Ryland, two more unnecessary casualties in a war that simply would not end.

With V’s group back on the road, we know their attempt to escape is doomed to failure. But Frazier’s dazzling descriptions give us hope, hope that is quickly dashed when Federal troops capture V and take Jimmie away from her.

Readers who loved Frazier’s luscious language and compelling characters in his earlier books will agree that Varina was worth the long wait.

But what are they to make of V, her husband, and the Confederate heroes who are bit players in the new book?

Perhaps Frazier leaves a clue with the final words, as James Blake remembers what V says to him on one of their visits at Saratoga Springs.

“When the time is remote enough nobody amounts to much.” OH

D.G. Martin hosts North Carolina Bookwatch, which airs Sundays at 11 a.m. and Thursdays at 5 p.m. on UNC-TV.

2018 Department The Omnivorous Reader

Return to Tall Timbers

A testament to the power of storytelling

By Billy Eye

“Wow! I like being part of a magazine that changes people’s lives.” — O.Henry Contributing Editor David Bailey

This time Eye wasn’t out wandering, it was my precious sister Rives who, until recently, was unaware she’s a television spokesperson for Peters Auto Mall. No, really!

You see, one Saturday afternoon Rives and her boyfriend Mark Burgess, mandolin player for Flint Hill, drove down a long gravel roadway alongside a small body of water off Pinecroft Road to take a gander at a dilapidated bridge at the end of that road.

My sister became familiar with the area after I moved from Los Angeles into a magnificent home on the other side of the lake in 1994 following a career in the motion picture business. Unknowingly, I found myself living next door to where I spent my first year of life, with my newlywed parents on Twin Lakes Drive, in a small cabin behind the expansive log house my grandparents were residing in, one they’d christened “Tall Timbers.”

Quoting from my May 2016 O.Henry article about that experience:

After . . . I described the crazy place I’d just rented my mother stood right up, “Take me out there now!” Incredulous as we rolled up the gravel drive, she stared peculiarly at that monumental log chalet across the lake, as if unsure of something. As we came to a halt in front of our new home she remarked, “This is the place! Those books of North Carolina ghost stories I read to you when you were a young child were written by the man who lived in this house. John Harden.”

Before I was born my father built the bridge over the reservoir separating the drives Hardens and the Ingrams, made precarious over the ensuing decades by missing and splintered beams. Stepping gingerly across on October 1, 1994, I chanced to look down. Scrawled into one of the supports in Dad’s handwriting was the date the concrete was poured — 10-1-54 — forty years ago to the day. John Harden’s book Tarheel Ghosts was published on October 1, 1954.

While my sister and Mark were snapping photos, Tall Timber’s current residents, the Jenkins family, walked down to greet them. After Rives mentioned that our grandparents lived here in the 1950s, and they had added a second floor to the home because the ceiling had been high enough to accommodate it, Betsy Jenkins told my sister how they came to be there. All due to O.Henry magazine, as it turned out.

Back in 2016, Mrs. Jenkins described to me in an email the unusual circumstances that resulted in their residing on Twin Lakes. “Last October, my husband, Justin, and I began dreaming of relocating our large family to Greensboro. We are natives of Southern California and, like yourself, have grown disenchanted with the rat race. This is not where we want to raise our children. We dream of an outdoor life for them, with more woodcraft and kindling and less Minecraft and Kindles. My family have all moved to Greensboro and we fell in love with the area. Justin began looking at job postings and I began looking at real estate listings.

“I saw Tall Timbers on a real estate website and it was love at first scroll. It was everything we’d ever dreamed of. It was also way out of our price range. Still, I showed it to everyone who would look at it, with glittering eyes and breathless words.

“Then the house was suddenly taken off the market. We sighed but resigned ourselves to the fact that it wasn’t something we could have afforded anyhow. We looked at other homes but nothing ever measured up to Tall Timbers.

“In April, my mother brought back a copy of O.Henry magazine from a trip to Greensboro . . . and immediately lost it, never even cracking it open. This was actually her second copy of the magazine. She had picked one up and then accidentally left it in a restaurant. She couldn’t really say why she had been so determined to have a copy of the magazine. On August 19th, I was helping her pack up her house here in SoCal for their move to Greensboro when she finally located her copy. She opened it at random to your article and cried out ‘Betsy! It’s your house!’ My mother will now carry the title of prophetess in our family.

“I grabbed the magazine, scanned the article and then quickly picked up my iPad to see if I could locate the Realtor who had represented Tall Timbers when it had been listed. Justin and I had discussed the possibility of approaching the owners and offering to purchase their home for much less than what they had been asking. Seeing the home in your article had rekindled that first love again and I wanted to pursue it.

“To my astonishment, I discovered that Tall Timbers had been relisted less than an hour earlier, now within our price range. I quickly called my husband. He said, ‘Let’s go for it.’

“After we had talked to our agent, I had time to actually read your article. What a wonderful history my family is joining! How excited we were to learn that the Hardens raised five boys on the lake. We also have five sons. What a legacy Tall Timbers will be for them. My mind is already churning out ideas for a series of children’s books about the Boys of Tall Timbers.

“I am an artist, like yourself, and am delighted at the idea of working in such an idyllic setting. Most of my work is currently designs printed on tableware, dishes, linens, etc, but my dream is to produce children’s books in the line of Beatrix Potter, Edward Ardizzone and A.A.Milne. How serendipitous that this lovely lake will once again play muse to an artist with aspirations to follow a new dream.

“I am indebted to your grandparents for their beautiful and clever additions to Tall Timbers! The storage spaces and knotty pine totally have my heart. We homeschool the younger boys (I have one high schooler enrolled at the Math and Science Academy) and the home is laid out so well for our needs. My husband works from home and will use the guest cabin, your first home, as his office.”

Wouldn’t you know there’s an O.Henry twist ending? The Jenkins moved into Tall Timbers on October 1, 2016. OH

Billy Eye got off easy on this one.

2018 Department

Almanac JUNE

By Ash Alder

Hand painted sketch of pink rose flower with buds, stem and leaves, watercolor illustration isolated on white background. Watercolor sketch illustration of pink rose flower on white background

June evening fades in such a way you wonder if it’s all a dream.

We let go of spring, our palms now cupped to receive the first blackberries, scuppernongs, Cherokee Purples warm from the sun.

Plump strawberries slowly vanish from the patch, and when the fireflies come out to dance, out, too, comes the homemade mead.

This year, summer solstice falls on Thursday, June 21. We celebrate the longest day of the year with bare feet, new intentions, sacred fire and dance. Now until Dec. 21, the days are getting shorter.

Savor the fragrant amalgam of honeysuckle and wild rose. Feel the hum of heavy hives, porch fans and crickets. And as cicadas serenade you into dreamy oblivion, sip slowly the sweetness of this golden season.

Whistling for More

I can’t see “Butter Beans” hand-painted on a roadside sign without hearing the Little Jimmy Dickens tune my grandpa used to sing or hum or whistle to himself on quiet Sunday drives:

Just a bowl of butter beans
Pass the cornbread if you please
I don’t want no collard greens
All I want is a bowl of butter beans.

Red-eye gravy is all right
Turnip sandwich a delight
But my children all still scream
For another bowl of butter beans.

When they lay my bones to rest
Place no roses upon my chest
Plant no blooming evergreens
All I want is a bowl of butter beans.

The Carolina Chocolate Drops sing a much sultrier song about this summer staple, but both tunes suggest that, in the South, the lima is the darling of beans.

Good for the heart (this sparks another ditty but we won’t go there), butter beans are rich in dietary fiber, protein, minerals and antioxidant compounds.

Slow cook them or toss them in a cold summer salad. Regardless of how you choose to eat them, best to get them fresh while you can.

Gifts for Papa

Father’s Day falls on Sunday, June 17. I think of my papa’s old fishing hat, how it would slide down my brow and, eventually, past my eyelids, then remember his hearty laugh. A few seeds of inspiration for the beloved patriarch in your life:

A khaki brown Boonie hat or sun hat on a white background with copy space

A new feather for the old cap.

Homemade bread for mater sandwiches.

Pickled okra — local and with a kick!

Homemade mead.

Seeds for the fall garden: lettuce, cabbage, cauliflower,
collards, pumpkin.

On this June day, the buds in my garden are almost as enchanting as the open flowers. Things in bud bring, in the heat of a June noontide, the recollection of the loveliest days of the year — those days of May when all is suggested, nothing yet fulfilled.

– Francis King

Magic, Mighty Oak

When the sun sets on Saturday, June 23, bonfires will crackle in the spirit of Saint John’s Eve. On this night, the ancient Celts would powder their eyelids with fern spores in hopes of seeing wee nature spirits dancing on the threshold between worlds.

The Celts sure loved their nature spirits. According to Celtic tree astrology, those born from June 10 — July 7 resonate with the sacred oak, a tree said to embody cosmic wisdom and regal power within its expansive roots, trunk and branches. Strong and nurturing, oak types radiate easy confidence. They’re most compatible with ash (Jan. 22 — Feb. 18) and reed (Oct. 28 — Nov. 24) and ivy (Sept. 30 — Oct. 27).

If you find yourself in the company of an ancient oak on a dreamy summer evening, do be on the lookout for playful flashes of light.

2018 Features

A World Beneath One Roof

Super G Mart is an international bazaar for local foodies

By Billy Ingram
Photographs by Sam Froelich

In the past 50 years, our city has undergone a culinary transformation, from an international food desert to a genuine hub for haute cuisine from every corner of the globe. Laotian, Vietnamese, African, Egyptian, Thai, Yemeni, Indian, Tex-Mex — Greensboro has a global, palate-pleasing smorgasbord.

Imagine how difficult it would be sourcing all the myriad exotic ingredients those diverse ethnic undertakings require were it not for Super G Mart, located on West Market west of Spring Garden. If you haven’t experienced this cultural mashup, you must. Wandering among its stalls is like opening a Russian nesting doll; the deeper you dive the more there is to discover.

Stare wide-eyed at towering aisles stacked with 20 varieties of Udon noodles, hundreds of aromatic spices, Japanese green teas and coffees, Vietnamese meatballs, Korean dried licorice, Indian curry paste, juices and extracts from just about every conceivable fruit and vegetable. Plus, this great big grocery superstore boasts a full-service meat and fish market, alongside a produce selection that features an encyclopedic array of fruits and vegetables — cranberry beans, aloe vera leaves, green coconuts, kumquats, whole tropical jackfruit, seven pears of assorted origins, a dozen cultivars of bananas, vivid red and green habaneros, and a vast array of indigenous roots. Everything you never knew someone, somewhere needed, all under one roof.

In the meat section, recognizable drumsticks, steaks, chops and other traditional cuts of meat are on display alongside tails, feet, belly meat, shanks, jowls, not to mention a variety of gizzards, intestines, stomach, liver. Multi-pound packs of fatback will keep that Fry Baby you borrowed from the neighbor bubbling for months. Look for conveniently cubed goat heads, pig ears, beef lips, black-skinned chickens dressed for healthful chicken soup, ox and turkey tails (turkeys have tails?!?), and pre-packed chicken feet. Even if you’re no wannabe Top Chef, this is a one-stop shop for ancient incantations, spells, and curses.

Over in the seafood market, squid, catfish, kingfish, red drum, black sea bass, yellow croaker, and pink snapper lay upon a bed of chipped ice. Seasonally you can buy live tilapia, lobsters and blue crabs. There’s also salmon heads for fans of fish-head curry. One caveat, these fishmongers are sometimes overwhelmed meeting the requests of demanding customers. You’ll want to be patient and jostle for your place in line. Plus, the best way to see the store is by slowly browsing, because it’s difficult to take in everything on the first visit.

A favorite of caterers and fine dining chefs for years, Super G is a well-oiled operation, requiring constant restocking and inventory control due to the sheer number of neatly arranged products they carry. The place is a maze of shelves and alcoves stocked deep with canned whelk and baby conch, rice vinegars, dried mushrooms, ginger powders, crated duck eggs. . . there’s an entire refrigerated case reserved for European breads and cheeses.

Know what else you’ll find? Almost anything else you’d look for at a standard grocery store; Dole fruit cups, Peter Pan peanut butter, Southern Pride pimento loaf, grape Juicy Juice, Lucky Charms.

And prices lower than a snake’s belly which, surprisingly, I didn’t find in the coolers.

At the entrance to Super G is a colorful European-style marketplace with mom-and-pop fashion, knick-knack, and jewelry boutiques, professional services, and my favorite the Used Shoe Store, where you can literally walk in someone else’s moccasins.

On the way home, you might want to stop off for some Vietnamese coffee at the Asian Kitchen, a funky fresh eatery just inside Super G’s front door. Vietnamese Pho is their specialty but I’m especially fond of the beef in peanut sauce. For dessert, Suman rice cakes are a Filipino treat, sweet sticky rice cooked in coconut milk, wrapped in banana leaves, steamed then sprinkled with sugar. Or maybe you want to wash it all down with a Honeydew Tea, one of many refreshing flavors Asian Kitchen brews.

Super G anchors the FantaCity International Mall where families from far-away nations gather daily to create culinary experiences unlike any other. Perhaps I’m over-romanticizing, but I believe an intimacy is established, consciously or not, when folks prepare meals from handed-down recipes.

Tampopo Ramen & Hibachi is Greensboro’s first honest-to-goodness Japanese noodle shop. Ramen-ya actually, a store primarily serving ramen with a few other options to bulk out the menu. Their sumptuous broths are prepared over the course of several hours, in the traditional style. Reflecting Sun Ja Lim’s passion, she of Sushi Republic fame, I can attest to Tampopo’s delectable authenticity, noodles and hearty ingredients.

Tongues are not only delighted but wagging about Sana’a’s home-style Middle Eastern entrees, savory kabob platters, lamb mandi, chicken tawook, fish salta, vegetarian specialties and freshly baked saluf. Judging from friends’ and published rave reviews, this newly opened corner space is nothing short of sensational. Stroll around FantaCity and you’ll also find Chinese, Korean, and Kimchi-to-go restaurants.

I doubt old-timers weaving ladies’ lingerie on this spot for decades beginning in 1950 would recognize FantaCity as Guilford Mills’ first permanent finishing plant. In the early 2000s, that brick albatross was transformed into this international shopping center but, unlike Cotton Mill Square in the ’80s, they did so without regard to preserving the original architectural integrity.

Just as well, fitting actually. FantaCity thrives on gritty optimism, no need for unnecessary hindrances from the extinction. Within these walls a palatable entrepreneurial spirit manifests itself around every corner, hard-working individuals engaged in the pursuit of that exalted All-American dream. Providing the public with an experience like no other. OH

2018 Features

Simple Life

Letting Go

Until then, hang on to dear, sweet life

By Jim Dodson

On a glorious end-of-spring afternoon, my friend Keith Bowman took me to see his farm, 15 miles southeast of town, a forested tract of land to which he has devoted the last 35 years so as to turn it into a peaceable kingdom for people who love nature.

We met when I wrote about Keith and three college buddies who’ve attended every Masters Tournament together since 1960, a friendship still going strong 60 years later. During our conversations about Augusta National, Keith let on that he once took a sprig of the famous Augusta azaleas hoping to root and grow the same plant here in North Carolina on his farm where he and a cousin cultivated more than 600 azaleas and rhododendron.

When he learned I was an addicted gardener, he invited me to ride out someday and see his “garden that’s gone a little wild.”

Before that, however, was the matter of an old tree.

“There it is,” he said, pulling to the side on a quiet lane that turned off the Company Mill Road. “What do you think of that?”

The tree was an ancient poplar, rising from a small forested vale below the road bed, massive and very mystical-looking, knotted and gnarly as a giant’s index finger rising to a deep blue sky, at least 13 feet or so in circumference. The monster looked like something out of a children’s story, the home of a Druid king or hermit wizard.

“One day when I was about 13, my father brought me here to see this tree and told me how his grandfather hid in it to avoid being conscripted by the Confederate army.” On his next birthday, Keith Bowman will be 85. “The tree was probably close to 100 years old back then.”

“What amazes me is how it has survived everything from rough weather to changes here in the countryside,” said Keith. “Its top was sheared off long ago but it’s still putting out limbs and leaves. It just won’t let go, comes back year after year.”

Keith’s farm, which is named Ironwood and sits near the village of Climax, was pretty amazing in its own right. Though there are fields he leases to neighbors for raising crops, most of the 120-acre property is covered by a gorgeous forest of hardwoods. There is a handsome unpainted farmhouse and a large barn well off the road, both of which suffered significant damage from the great ice storm of 2014, when large trees toppled onto their roofs. Other trees fell onto the spectacular octagonal gazebo built by Keith and his late father, Ross, beside the acre-and-a-half pond Keith had built at the heart of his earthly paradise.

The gazebo and pond were designed for swimming and fishing. The structure features hand-cut wooden shingles from the mountains and is bunkered by the aforementioned red and white azaleas.

“Because of the ice storms, the place doesn’t look as nice as it used to,” Keith needlessly apologized. “But this has certainly been a source of a lot of joy to me, friends and neighbors,” he allowed as we walked through the woods to see the remains of a large nursery where rhododendron and large azaleas were returning to a wild state.

In the farm’s glory days, Keith invited school groups and neighbors from nearby Climax to use the property for “a getaway in nature,” and once threw a party for neighbors from the crossroads with barbecue and a bluegrass band.

Ironwood visitors fished, had picnics, hiked and swam. There is even a fancy paneled outhouse with a cathedral roof, skylight, electric lights, running water and a chandelier. “It’s kind of the Cadillac of outhouses,” Keith joked.

Across the pond, he installed an orchard with 81 fruit trees and a large grape arbor of Concord, scuppernong and muscadine varieties. “For years I had so much fruit I couldn’t give it away,” he told me as we strolled around the pond.

It was late in the day and the surrounding woods were stirring with life, full of birdsong. The light was almost ethereal, the serenity complete in the seclusion of Keith Bowman’s Peaceable Kingdom.

“You wouldn’t believe all the wildlife around us,” he was moved to say as we walked, pausing to marvel as a trio of honking Canada geese zoomed over the pond and our heads, heading north with spring. “That’s why it means so much to me to keep this place the way it is — to pass it along to someone who will properly care for it and allow others to use it for relaxation and spiritual renewal.”

As a kid, Keith dreamed of becoming a test pilot, and nearly achieved that dream by training as a fighter pilot during the Cold War. After that, he worked as an engineer on the Nike missile for Western Electric in Burlington. A long career with the Small Business Administration followed — he was in charge of both Carolinas for a time — introducing him to good friends he keeps up with to this day. For a decade, he performed with a traveling gospel group. Though he never married (“a couple of near-misses,” he says with a wistful laugh, “that just didn’t work out”), he has enjoyed a full life of faith and friendship, belonging to several different churches.

It’s the uncertain fate of Ironwood that chews at him. Since the death of a neighbor who did most of the heavy maintenance work on the property, Keith can’t possibly keep up with all that needs to be done.

“I don’t have any relations left to give it to,” he admitted, as we started back to his car. “That’s a problem I think a lot of older Americans face these days. As we get older out in the country, younger folks aren’t replacing us. They want to live in the city. You can’t blame them. But connections will be lost.”

For this reason, Keith has spent decades photographing nature and creating documents to show what was done, filling several meticulously organized scrapbooks.

When I suggested that he might consider giving the farm to a local church for a retreat or youth camp, given his strong connections to local congregations, he smiled and shook his head. “I know people who have done just that. Most churches would sell the property for other purposes.”

On the drive back to town, he showed me the historic Tabernacle Methodist Church, where generations of his family are buried. The interior of the church was a handmade gem. Keith has photographed all of its stained-glass windows.

“I think about a line I heard from the film Life of Pi,” he mused as we drove back into town. “All of life seems to be about letting go of things you love. Truthfully, I’m the worst person in the world at letting things go,” he said with a laugh. “But you’ve got to eventually let it go. I know that.”

Keith and his personal nature preserve were still on my mind a few days later when I phoned my friend Joe who is an experienced forester who helps people just like Keith figure out what to do with their land when the time arrives to let it go. Joe, as I knew he would, agreed to give his perspective and advice.

I even looked up the quote from Life of Pi, which goes, “I suppose in the end, the whole of life becomes an act of letting go, but what always hurts the most is not taking a moment to say goodbye.”

Keith, at least, is taking his own sweet time to say goodbye.

Out in my half-finished Japanese garden, meanwhile, which has shown great improvement over the course of a cool and rainy spring, I couldn’t help but think about the things of this world I treasure but will someday have to let go.

As it happened, I was planting a pair of Red Slipper azaleas and a Christmas fern mixed with the ashes of the three well-loved golden retrievers that brought our family incalculable joy over the years. My garden will be the final resting places for dear old Amos, Bailey and Riley the Rooster, as we called him — and, with a little luck, perhaps the head gardener as well.

A rusted iron sign that stood forever in the peonies of my late mother’s garden read: Dig in the soil, delve in the soul. No place better than one’s garden to do that. Thomas Jefferson always made lists that he kept in his back pocket, especially when in his garden.

Keith and his farm were still on my mind, and I couldn’t help but make my own mental list of the people and things of this world I shall someday have to let go.

Naturally, my adorable wife and four great kids top the list — though with luck they’ll have to let go of me first.

As I dug, my simple list grew: my dog Mulligan, old friends, golf with buddies, quiet time in my garden, a house that finally feels like home, early church, arboretums, old hymns, my wife’s caramel cake, histories and spy novels, birds at the feeder, the glory of spring, the spice of autumn, the silence of snowy nights, film scores, dawn walks, rainy Sundays, supper on the porch, the blue of dusk, garden catalogs, my new rubber boots, my old guitar, blue limericks, roses in June, freshly baked bread, driving back roads, all of Scotland, half of England, the poems of Billy Collins and Mary Oliver, and a few other things I shall surely miss and think of later.

Leave it to Mary Oliver to offer the best advice to Keith and me and others like us.

“To live in this world,” she said, “you must be able to do three things. To love what is mortal and hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and then, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.” OH

Contact Editor Jim Dodson at jim@thepilot.com.

2018 Department Simple Life

Scuppernong Bookshelf

Summer Soup

June’s a mixed bag of new releases

Compiled by Brian Lampkin

I don’t know how to feel about June. School’s out, which brings joy to some and terror to others. Summer’s here, and with it the withering heat that fries May’s floral beauty into a dry, pale palette. June holds my birthday, but the cause for celebrating it has run its course, if you follow my meaning. I’m ambivalent about June, and I’m here to tell you it’s perfectly OK to be of two minds about some things. June’s a mishmash, so here’s a mash-up of largely unrelated books that will newly appear this month. Some will appeal to you; some might repel. And some will leave you uncertain. Good.

June 5: Flash: The Making of Weegee the Famous, Christopher Bonanos (Henry Holt, $32) The creator of The Wire, David Simon, says: “Arthur ‘Weegee’ Fellig was perhaps the perfect vehicle for defining and delivering the fear and wonder of the modern city to our American spirit. Journalist, artist, and huckster, Weegee stole shards of a New York through a camera lens, then reassembled the great city in a mosaic that somehow — despite a fair degree of fraud — still defines urbanity itself for us. We know the photographs, and now, with this biography from Christopher Bonanos, we can finally know something of the legendary, improbable, and much-caricatured man.”

June 5: Double Take: The World’s Most Iconic Photographs Meticulously Re-Created in Miniature, by Jojakim Cortis & Adrian Sonderegger. (Thames & Hudson. $40). Double Take presents 40 astonishingly accurate reconstructions of iconic photographs — ranging from the earliest known to the world’s most expensive. With images showing the reconstruction process, a supporting essay and an in-depth interview with the photographers, Double Take is a dream for lovers of photography or miniatures — with a twist.

June 5: The Secret Token: Myth, Obsession, and the Search for the Lost Colony of Roanoke, by Andrew Lawler (Doubleday, $29.95). What happened to the Lost Colony of Roanoke? That question has consumed historians, archeologists and amateur sleuths for four hundred years. In The Secret Token, Andrew Lawler sets out on a quest to determine the fate of the settlers, finding fresh leads as he encounters a host of characters obsessed with resolving the enigma. In the course of his journey, Lawler examines how the Lost Colony came to haunt our national consciousness. Lawler appears in person at Scuppernong Books on Thursday, June 7 at 7 p.m.

June 12: Light of the Stars: Alien Worlds and the Fate of the Earth, by Adam Frank (Norton, $26.95). Thrilling science at the grandest of scales, Light of the Stars explores what may be the largest question of all: What can the likely presence of life on other worlds tell us about our own fate?

June 12: Advice for Future Corpses (and Those Who Love Them): A Practical Perspective on Death and Dying, by Sallie Tisdale (Touchstone, $25.99). The concept of death is hard to fathom. Tisdale explores our fears and all the ways death and talking about death make us uncomfortable — but she also explores its intimacies and joys. She looks at grief, what the last days and hours of life are like — and what happens to dead bodies. Advice for Future Corpses includes exercises designed to make you think differently about the inevitable

June 19: Call Me American: A Memoir, by Abdi Nor Iftin (Knopf, $26.95). Sporting American clothes and dance moves, he became known around Mogadishu as Abdi American, but when the radical Islamist group al-Shabaab rose to power in 2006, it suddenly became dangerous to celebrate Western culture. Desperate to make a living, Abdi used his language skills to post secret dispatches to NPR and the Internet, which found an audience of worldwide listeners.

June 19: The Great Believers, by Rebecca Makkai. (Viking, $27). Writer Garth Greenwell (who appeared at Scuppernong two years ago) says this “expansive, huge-hearted novel conveys the scale of the trauma that was the early AIDS crisis, and conveys, too, the scale of the anger and love that rose up to meet it. Rebecca Makkai shows us characters who are devastated but not defeated, who remain devoted, in the face of death, to friendship and desire and joyful, irrepressible life. I loved this book.” I’m in.

June 26: The Unpunished Vice: A Life of Reading, by Edmund White (Bloomsbury, $28). Blending memoir and literary criticism, The Unpunished Vice is a compendium of all the ways reading has shaped White’s life and work. His larger-than-life presence on the literary scene lends itself to fascinating, intimate insights into the lives of some of the world’s best-loved cultural figures. OH

Brian Lampkin is one of the proprietors of Scuppernong Books.

2018 Department

Poem

Peaches

are what she wanted in the end

said they reminded her of South

Carolina that summer she was

fifteen, living with her Auntie

Josephine in a white clapboard

house at the end of a dirt road.

They’d pick cotton during the day,

eat peaches for lunch, her fingers

sticky the rest of the afternoon.

There was a boy who worked the farm,

Jerri, who kissed her one July afternoon

and then never returned to work.

There were thunderstorms, she said

so quick and fierce, all you could do

was lay in the fields and let the rain

wash your dirty face, your hair,

pray you didn’t get struck by lightning.

And dogs would appear, follow behind

you for an hour or two then disappear.

Her aunt would walk out into the field

with a wicker basket of peaches, smiling,

saying take two, take three and she took

all she could stomach. In this nursing

home, now, I don’t have anything to give her

except my time, my ears for her stories, so

on my next visit I bring her a peach and while

she can no longer chew it, still she lifts it

to her nose, smells the sweetness beneath

the surface, rubs it against her cheek,

a scene so private I have to look away.

— Steve Cushman

2018 Features

Feathered Phantom

The secretive, beautiful green heron finds a summer home in these parts

By Susan Campbell

Think of a heron and a tall, lanky wader comes to mind. However, the green heron is quite a different animal! This stocky bird is about the size of a crow with relatively short yellow legs. But it does have a dark, dagger-like bill and a handsome, velvety-green back, dark cap and chestnut-colored body. And in true heron form, it moves slowly and deliberately, hunting in and around the water’s edge. Because of this slow-motion lifestyle, this bird is often overlooked. When it flushes from thick vegetation or croaks to advertise its territory might be the rare occasions that this bird gets noticed.

Green herons can be found through most of our state. Here in the Sandhills and Piedmont they spend the spring and summer months in all types of wet habitat. Not surprisingly, they feed on fish, amphibians and large invertebrates. They have even been known to grab hummingbirds from time to time! Very versatile hunters, green herons can dive and swim after prey if motivated. Moving through deep water is likely made possible by their natural buoyancy and partial webbing between their toes. Most remarkably, this is one of a very few bird species that actually uses tools. Individuals have been known to use worms, twigs, feathers, bread crusts and other enticements to lure small fish within easy reach.

Green herons are adaptable when it comes to breeding as well. A pair bond is formed between males and females from spring through late summer. The male will choose a spot and begin nest building early on. The female will take over and construct a platform of sticks that may be solid or quite flimsy. But the nest will always be protected, whether it is in a tree or large shrub. The clutch of three to five eggs is assiduously tended by both parents. Likewise, the young will be fed and brooded not only by the female but by the male as well. And for several weeks the heron family will stick together while the juveniles learn what it takes to survive.

You can expect to see green herons from late March into September. Most members of the population in the Eastern United States then head to the Caribbean and Central America in the fall. Even before this southward movement, individuals may wander in almost any direction, especially if food levels drop or water sources dry up. Individuals have covered very long distances. Surprisingly, a few have been observed as far away as Great Britain and France.

So over the next few months, if you scan the edges of wet habitat, you may be lucky enough to spot a green heron, hunched over with a long, sharp bill, staring intently into the water. Better yet, listen for a loud, catlike “skeow” or odd screaming that may give these somewhat secretive birds away. Should a bird fly, it may seem somewhat crow-like with slow wing beats, but its partially unfolded neck will certainly give it away. OH

Susan would love to hear from you. Feel free to send wildlife observations to susan@ncaves.com

2018 Department