Department | O.Henry Magazine

Sazerac

SAZERAC

Sage Gardener

My introduction to kimchi was via M*A*S*H, when Frank Burns boasts about catching some Korean peasants burying a land mine — which turns out to be a vat of kimchi. Upon excavation, Hawkeye takes his own dig at Burns, saying “You’ve struck coleslaw!”

Actually, it’s rather surprising that the usually wellinformed M*A*S*H writers should mention slaw. Fermented and aged (traditionally underground to control the temperature) for a month or more, kimchi doesn’t vaguely resemble coleslaw. Think of a nostril-bending flavor bomb made with fermented cabbage, spiked with chilies, ginger and garlic.

My next encounter with kimchi was on the end of a fork in Cocoa, Florida, where I was writing about the space shuttle’s efforts to escape Earth’s gravity. An editor who had hitchhiked across Asia served it with warm sake one night — love at first bite. I was soon fermenting my own, filling the house with a thick aroma. Another reporter and I would get up at daybreak and catch a mess of mullet, which my wife, Anne, would fry and serve with grits and kimchi. The reporter and I still say it’s the best breakfast we ever had.

Since pickling vegetables is an ideal method of extending their lifespan, kimchi making in Korea dates back to well before the Christian Era. But forget the chilies. Chili peppers, native to the Americas, didn’t make it to Korea until the 1600s.

Most of the kimchi available in America is made from Napa cabbage and scallions, sometimes with added fish sauce. Authentic Korean kimchi often contains salted shrimp or croaker — or other finny prey, including anchovies and salted cod gills.

I’ve found that kimchi tends to appeal to people who relish the strongest of flavors. A friend who obsessively made beer for a while, transitioned to kimchi, observing that he became “fascinated by the alchemy of salt turning bland vegetables into hot, sour yumminess.” Plus, he hoped it “would nurture my gut and cure what age and various vices had inflicted on me.” Like other fermented foods, kimchi’s teeming bacteria is purportedly good for your intestinal microbiome. But people eat kimchi because they love how it triggers endorphins, generally appealing to the same people who fall in love with tonguenumbing hot sauces, hopcrazy IPA’s, mind-bending mescals and peaty, smoky Isla scotch.

Making kimchi is as easy as making sauerkraut and there are a plethora of recipes on the internet. As the days grow colder, consider starting a batch, especially if you have cabbage in your garden. There’s something magical about having a batch of kimchi bubbling away in a dark room, getting a little more sour with each passing day, a little hotter and a little more redolent. Get started now and it will make a great gift under the tree — festively green and red — and mask that annoying evergreen scent.

— David Claude Bailey

Letters

To Cassie Bustamante in response to her June 2024 column, “Curb Alert”

As I sit here in my yard chair relaxing after a morning of delayed yard work, I am enjoying the June edition of O.Henry magazine.

Your article brings back memories. Christmas 2003, my son received his first car as a present. It was a 1998 Jeep Cherokee.

The thought being, it would help in having another driver, helping with errands, stopping his mother and I being his chauffeur. Wrong!

However, that’s not the story at hand.

I remember that Christmas Day going out for a drive with my son Nick at the helm. He decided that a ride on the highway I-40 would be a good idea to test out his new ride.

I have never been so scared sh&$less in my entire life. All I could do was pray and hope to get home in one piece.

Finally he pulled into the driveway and, forgetting to put the Jeep in park, he hit the rear bumper of my wife’s Mercury.

We did have a happy ending though. The Mercury was a tank, no visible damage to either vehicle.

Reading your article brought back this now humorous incident to mind.

Our kids, no matter what they do, leave us with memories. Hopefully, good ones.

— David Ruden

The Passed Baton

“You Should Be Dancing,” the Greensboro Symphony Orchestra has decided — and with a new Aussie conductor as your dance master. Christopher Dragon will take the baton on September 14 to lead the symphony in a POPS Concert featuring The Australian Bee Gees Show, a tribute to the legendary group, at the Tanger Center. Bellbottoms optional.

During its last season, dubbed “Season of the Seven,” seven candidates auditioned — each having an opportunity to lead the symphony. Dragon won out. Hailing from Perth, Australia, Christopher Dragon began his career in his home country with the West Australia Symphony Orchestra. Since then, he’s led the Colorado Symphony as well as the Wyoming Symphony, and worked with orchestras the world over. Plus, not to name drop — but, just for you music aficionados, we’re going to — he’s collaborated with the likes of Cynthia Erivo, Joshua Bell, the Wu-Tang Clan and Cypress Hill. And he’s stoked to bring his flair to the Gate City while creating “unforgettable symphonic experiences to inspire the next generation of music lovers.”

But wait — there’s more! While there can only be one conductor on the podium at a time, sometimes there’s room for two at the top. Chelsea Tipton, fellow “Season of the Seven” candidate, has been named principal guest conductor. A native of Greensboro, Tipton currently serves as music director of the Symphony of Southeast Texas and principal pops conductor of the New Haven Symphony Orchestra. “Returning to my hometown in this capacity is a dream come true,” he says.

Unsolicited Advice

Did you know that September is National Italian Cheese Month? Grate-est news ever grazie! We support any observance that involves feasting on that melt-in-your-mouth (or on your sandwich) delight, any way you slice it. But preferably with carbs and wine, per favore. Stock up on Lactaid and get ready to dazzle your palate with some of our magnifico varieties!

Gorgonzola: Sounds like an evil character from a 1980s cartoon featuring little blue creatures, but is actually the Italian answer to blue — or, shall we say bleu — cheese. Crumbles easily, just like us.

Mozzarella: Quite possibly the most popular pizza topping due to its meltability. Frankly, we’d eat it as a topper to the cardboard circle frozen pizza comes on in its ooey-gooeiest state. By the way, mozzarella is not related to Cinderella, who is actually French.

Parmigiano-Reggiano: Two first names? Must be from Southern Italy.

Mascarpone: Any cheese that can masca-rade as dessert is a winner in our books. If pizza pie isn’t your thing, how ‘bout a pumpkin-mascarpone pie?

Ricotta: Rick oughta make us his famous lasagne soon. And tell him to use the good stuff — none of that cottage cheese.

Provolone: Between two slices of crusty Italian bread slathered with butter, this one makes a delicious and simple grilled cheese. Ready, set, ciao!

O.Henry Ending

O.HENRY ENDING

Southern Idioms Live On

You can’t understand us, we know it, but we just can’t help it

By Cynthia Adams

Personally, I’m tickled that YouTubers — such as former art teacher Landon Bryant — can make a living doing pure T nothing. (There’s a Southernism for you, Landon.) That is, nothing but talking, then explaining whatever was said.

This native son breaks down such terms as “mash” (as in the brake, button, alarm or gas pedal) versus “press.” He explains “liked to” (as in “liked to die” or “liked to have gone to meet my Maker”) to those beyond his hometown, Laurel, Mississippi — population 17,000.

Southerners have our own linguistic mashup. For example, I married a ferner, Southern for anybody who isn’t a native. Technically, a ferner could be from, say, Yonkers.

A primer: Yes’m is a contraction for “Yes Ma’am”

Bob wahr is just “barbed wire.”

Tin cints is just a dime. Except when “putting your tin cints worth in,” meaning offering your opinion. (Tin cints is about what most opinions are worth.)

There are directional Southernisms, too. “Over yonder” and “right cheer,” for example. In this context, cheer means here.

In another context, cheer means a seat.

“Why dontcha take a cheer?” doesn’t mean you are being offered a chair as a party favor. It means sit a spell.

Slang also perplexes. Nabs. Not the verb, as in “help me nab the bank robber.” Originally, short for a Nabisco snack, anybody who knows Sheetz from Shinola knows we’re talking about Toast Chee, a homegrown Lance snack.

Perversely, Southernisms aren’t always shorthand but sometimes longer. A form of linguistic face saving. Example: “I might coulda done things your way, but it warn’t up to me.” (A roundabout admission of messing up while passing the buck.)

Oftentimes, just more colorful. My grandmother was driven to distraction — meaning infuriated — by a neighbor who was “careless with the truth.” She declared he’d rather “climb a roof to tell a lie than stand on the ground and tell the truth.” Such deceit nearly caused a “conniption fit.” A conniption fit exceeds being driven to distraction.

Euphemisms exacerbate and blunt truths: A chronic screw up is “a day late and a dollar short,” or “a brick short of a load.”

Southerners especially evade mortality, finding death unnatural. “Elmer died” seems callow. Softening the blow: “Elmer went to his reward.” “Was called home.” “Met his Maker.” Or, “Elmer passed.” Just try to find a Southern obituary containing the word “died.” If you do, show me.

“Who’s laid out at the funeral parlor?” translates thusly: “Whose death requires paying our respects?” (An open casket not only invites but demands it. Custom dictates praise: to wit, “I can’t believe he/she looks so natural.”)

Thanks to “extreme embalming,” socialite Mickey Easterling presided unnaturally over a New Orleans wake, cocktail and ciggie in hand. Mourners “held up” well.

In the South, our favorite sons and daughters linger longer, thanks to TV. Singer Jimmy Dean, DOD 2010, still pitches sausage that is just as smoky as his voice.

Memphian Leslie Jordan’s YouTube soliloquies considered all things Southern from sweet tea to mullets. Jordan died in 2022, yet his videos? Never.

Dearly departed Julia Reed (2020) gaily mined Southern speak and culture. My friend, John, and I delight over Reed’s bon mots.

Over a stack of her books — But Mama Always Put Vodka in her Sangria on top — we recently raised a glass. We took her passing hard.

That death? Well, it liked to have killed us.

2024 Department O.Henry Ending

Almanac

ALMANAC

September

By Ashley Walshe

September rouses you from the gentle spell of summer.

One day, between the blackberry harvest and the mighty swell of crickets, the charm took hold. Languid and blissful, you sprawled beneath the dappled shade, eyes heavy, honeysuckle on your tongue.

Rest now, summer cooed. It’s much too hot to fuss.

And, just like that, you were under. Swaddled in sticky-sweetness. Wanting for nothing. Enchanted by the lazy lull of summer.

Until now.

Something has shifted. It’s a feeling, both subtle and seismic. At once, you’re wide awake.

The air is crisper, cooler, lighter. Colors are more vibrant. Even the birds have changed their tune.

Wake up, a skein of geese clamors overhead. There’s little time to waste!

Their frequency is a code. An ancient language. A precious remembering.

Everything will change.

The light. The trees. The pulse of the season.

Look to the maple tree, the honeybee, the frenzied gray squirrel. Life is racing toward some dark unknown. Put your ear to the warm earth and listen.

This is the threshold, the quickening, the no-going-back. The final kiss of summer.

And so, you feast with all your senses. You savor the fragrance of ginger lilies, the taste of wild muscadines, the spirit of goldenrod at magic hour. You kiss summer back.

A single leaf descends with a singing wind.

Stay open to the beauty of this moment. Stay open to the knowing that everything will change.

Harvest Moon Magic

Your eyes aren’t playing tricks. When the full harvest moon rises on the evening of Tuesday, Sept. 17, it will appear larger and brighter because it is, in fact, as close to Earth as it can be. What makes this supermoon even more spectacular is the partial lunar eclipse that will reach maximum coverage around 10:44 p.m. While only a small portion of the moon’s surface will be obscured by Earth’s shadow, this partial eclipse marks the beginning of an eclipse season. An annular solar eclipse will occur on Oct. 2. Although its “ring of fire” won’t be visible from North America, don’t be surprised if you feel its powerful energetic effects.

Seeing Stars

Look! The asters are blooming. Derived from the Latin astrum, meaning star, September’s birth flower transforms the late summer landscape with jubilant constellations of white, pink, blue or purple blossoms. Often mistaken for daisies, the aster is actually related to the sunflower. (Study its bright yellow center, composed of tiny florets, and see for yourself.)

According to one Greek myth, asters sprouted from the tears of a virgin goddess named Astraea, who wished for more stars in the sky. Instead, the brilliant “stars” began spilling across the quiet earth, as they’ve done every autumn since. Magic for the eyes. Magnets for the late-season butterflies.

2024 Almanac Department

Simple Life

12 DAYS OF CHRISTMAS

Worrying and Watering

For love of gardens and democracies

By Jim Dodson

A neighbor who walks by my house each evening like clockwork sees me sitting under the trees with a pitcher of ice water and walks over to say hello.

I invite Roger to take a seat and have a cold drink.

“It’s tough to keep moving in this heat,” he explains, sitting down. “It’s something, isn’t it? But your garden looks great.

How do you keep it so nice and green?”

“A lot of worrying and watering,” I say. “Sometimes you have to make tough choices.”

In one of the hottest and driest summers in memory, I’d decided to let my yard turn brown in favor of keeping flowering shrubs and young trees watered and green. As the late famous British landscape designer named Mirabel Osler once said to me over her afternoon gin and tonic, landscape gardening is a ruthless business, especially in a drought. Grass will eventually return, but no such luck with a shriveled shrub or a dead young tree.

“September brings relief, rain and second blooms,” I add. “I’m already in a September state of mind.”

He smiles and nods.

“Hey,” he says casually, “let me ask you something.”

I expect another question about the garden. Like the best time of the day to water your shrubs, or when it’s safe to fertilize or prune azaleas.

But it isn’t even close.

“I’m worried about America. People seem so angry these days. Why do you think Americans hate each other?”

The question takes me by surprise. I could give him a few thoughts on the subject: the woeful decline of fact-based journalism, an internet teeming with conspiracy peddlers, politicians who feed on polarization, the unholy marriage of politics and religion, and the sad absence of civility in everyday life.

Instead, I tell him a little story of rebirth.

In the spring of 1983, I telephoned my dad from the office of Vice President George Bush and told him that I no longer wanted to be a journalist. For almost seven years, I’d worked as a staff writer of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution Sunday Magazine, covering everything from presidential politics to murder and mayhem across the deep South. As a result of my work, I’d been offered my dream job in Washington, D.C., but found myself suddenly fed up with writing about crooks, con men and politicians. Bush, however, was an exception. We’d traveled extensively together during the 1980 campaign and had wonderful conversations about life, family and our shared love of everything from American history to golf. During our travels, Bush invited me to drop by his office anytime I happened to be in the nation’s capital. Unfortunately, he was traveling the day I turned down my dream job in Washington, but his secretary allowed me to use her phone. So, I called my dad and told him I planned to move to New England and learn to fly-fish.

“When was the last time you played golf?” he calmly asked.

“I think Jimmy Carter had just been elected.”

He suggested that I meet him in Raleigh the next morning.

So, I changed my flight and there he was, waiting with my dusty Haig Ultra golf clubs in his back seat. We drove to Pinehurst, played famed course No. 2 and finished on the Donald Ross porch, talking about my early midlife career crisis over a couple of beers. I’d just turned 30.

I told him that I “hated” making a living by writing about the sorrows of others, especially when it came to the increasingly shallow and mean-spirited world of politics.

“You may laugh, but here’s a thought,” the old man came back, sipping his beer. “Before you give up journalism, have you ever considered writing about things you love rather than things you don’t?”

Sadly, I did laugh. But he planted a seed in my head. A short time later, I resigned from my job in Atlanta and wound up on a trout river in Vermont, where I learned to fly-fish, started attending an old Episcopal Church and knocked the rust off my dormant golf game at an old nine-hole course where Rudyard Kipling played when he lived in the area.

I soon went to work for Yankee Magazine and spent the next decade writing about things I did love: American history, nature, boat builders, gardeners and artists — a host of dreamers and eccentrics who enriched life with their positive visions and talents.

I also got married and built my first garden on a forest hilltop near the Maine coast.

“I never looked back,” I tell Roger. “I’ve built five gardens since.”

Roger smiles.

“So, you’re telling me we all need to become gardeners?”

“Not a bad idea. Gardeners are some of the most generous people on Earth. We make good neighbors. Most of the country’s founders, by the way, were serious gardeners.”

I pour myself a little more ice water and tell him I’ve learned that gardens and democracies are a lot alike. “Both depend on the love and attention we give them. Especially in difficult times like these.”

Roger finishes his drink and stands up. “That’s something to think about. Here’s to September, cool weather and good neighbors,” he says. “Maybe by then even your grass will be green again.”

2024 Department Simple Life

Pleasures of Life Dept

PLEASURES OF LIFE DEPT.

Epiphanic Remembrances

Transported in moments of music making

By David C. Partington

The memory of my first epiphanic musical experience is as vivid to me today as it was in 1957. I was attending a community concert series recital by the German soprano Elizabeth Schwarzkopf at Cornell University’s Bailey Hall along with other students and faculty from Ithaca College. Toward the end of her performance of a cycle of Franz Schubert’s songs (lyrics by Wilhelm Müller), from her lips into my heart came the words, “Dein is mein Herz, und soll es ewig bleiben” (My heart is yours, and shall ever remain so). Suddenly, I was transported to a deep place. My spirit soared and remained there into the night. At the time, I realized I was the recipient of a gift from above.

My first performance at a student recital at Ithaca College is another memory of singular importance. Joseph Tague, my piano teacher had assigned me Abram Khachaturian’s “Toccata.” I loved the piece. From the percussive strike of the first chord, the Toccata and I were one! I had the distinct feeling that it was not I who was playing the piano, but that the music was being channeled through me. When I finished, the audience erupted in applause and shouts, calling me back to the stage a total of five times! The next day several faculty members sought me out to congratulate me. The experience was clearly epiphanic for both me and the audience.

Powerful, inspirational and life-deepening moments characterize my season of life spent as a church and community musician in Winston-Salem from 1966–1975. In preparing the Winston-Salem Symphony Chorus for a performance of George Frederick Handel’s “Coronation Anthems” there was a moment never to be forgotten. Handel’s setting of this ancient story begins with a lengthy introduction that culminates in the explosive “Zadok the Priest and Nathan the Prophet anointed Solomon King!” I gave the downbeat, and our accompanist, Margaret Kolb, began playing the powerful prelude, working her way toward a perfect crescendo. I watched as the chorus listened to her electrifying rendition. As our cue approached to begin singing, we glanced at one another, sang a measure or two, and — one by one — stopped singing. We had been so transported by Margaret’s perfect performance that we could not continue. We were awe struck! And then, from both bewilderment and embarrassment, we broke into exuberant laughter as a form of emotional release. For all of us, this was an epiphany to be remembered. Years later when I would have serendipitous conversations with chorus members and mention that particular rehearsal, they would simply smile and say, “Oh, yes!”

On another occasion, I was preparing the Winston-Salem Symphony Chorus to sing in a performance of Arrigo Boito’s “Prologue to Mephistopheles.” The work requires the addition of a boys’ choir. For several weeks, I rehearsed the boys — an enthusiastic group — for the role they would be singing. During the concert, they were seated up on the balcony at Reynolds Auditorium and, when it was their turn to sing, they gave nothing short of a transcendent performance, one-of-a-kind. Perhaps, this was the first time they experienced being transported by the sheer power of their own voices. As I walked towards their backstage room to celebrate after the performance, one of the parents stopped me. “The boys really want to see you!” When I walked into the room, they mobbed me. I wondered if this was like to be a rock star! There was no doubt about it. Those boys had been electrified by having been visited by a transcendent spiritual experience.

On another occasion, I was conducting the Symphony Chorus in a performance of “Toward the Unknown Region” at a birthday celebration of English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams at Salem College. The piece begins somberly and then builds to a crescendo that never breaks until the end, with the words: “Till when the ties loosen.” Once again, as I looked to my singers, I could see it in their eyes, in their posture and on their countenances. As their conductor, I was no longer in charge. With those words: “O joy! O fruit of all! Them to fulfil O soul,” it felt as if the Hanes Auditorium, singers, audience and the room itself were transported into a world beyond our imagining! We were together in a glorious Epiphany!

Even when, as a pastor, I was no longer making music professionally, the wondrous moments continued. During my first season of ministry (1978–1982), we were living about 60 miles from Washington, D.C. Our family enjoyed frequent trips to the Smithsonian Institute, the Washington National Zoo and the Washington National Cathedral. On a chilly Sunday afternoon, surrounded by the old-world artisanship of the Neo-Gothic Cathedral, we witnessed Paul Callaway conduct a performance of Gustav Mahler’s “Symphony No. 8,” a first for me. There were multiple moments in that performance that held me captive, but one in particular literally pinned me to one of the cathedral’s huge pillars. Near the close of the symphony, everything came down to a hush as the chorus seemed to almost whisper: “Alles Vergängliche ist nur ein Gleichnis” (“All that is ephemeral is but a symbol”). This was a moment of being transported and held transfixed. I could not — and dared not — move. I was being held by mystery beyond my comprehending.

2024 Department Pleasures of Life Dept.

Tea Leaf Astrologer

TEA LEAF ASTROLOGER

Virgo

(August 23 – September 22)

We appreciate your pragmatism. We really do. That said, it’s time to occupy the rooms in your Fifth House of Pleasure. (Note: Reorganizing the Tupperware doesn’t count.) What if there was no one to impress, no one to “fix,” nothing to accomplish? Try not trying so hard for five seconds and experience what can only be described as actual, factual joy. The Tupperware will be the icing on the cake.

Tea leaf “fortunes” for the rest of you:

Libra (September 23 – October 22)

Try clicking refresh.

Scorpio (October 23 – November 21)

Eat your greens.

Sagittarius (November 22 – December 21)

The aftertaste will be complex.

Capricorn (December 22 – January 19)

Embrace the imperfection.

Aquarius (January 20 – February 18)

There’s no going back.

Pisces (February 19 – March 20)

Conjure your own plot twist.

Aries (March 21 – April 19)

A full-bodied month with a buttery finish.

Taurus (April 20 – May 20)

Hint: The underdog wins.

Gemini (May 21 – June 20)

No need to spill all your secrets.

Cancer (June 21 – July 22)

One word: remediation.

Leo (July 23 – August 22)

Bring some cash. PS

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

2024 Department Tea Leaf Astrologer

Home Grown

Cut the Kiwi

The real reason Pan Am reached its final destination

By Cynthia Adams

As Pan Am approached its final destination in December 1991, it offered heavily discounted airfares, beginning that summer.

Monitoring deals, I noticed a $300 Pan Am offer from New York to Nice. At the height of travel season!

My elegant friend, Dixie, who loved travel, was immediately interested. We grabbed tickets and spent weeks excitedly planning. We’d enjoy the South of France, proceeding to Italy, where her friends were renting a place. Then I’d return solo from Genoa via Nice.

Consulting Frommer’s, my go-to guide, I circled budget hotels, pensiones and cafés.

Better-heeled travel friends offered advice. “Always request the airline’s vegetarian meal,” said Tom, who had studied at the Sorbonne. “It’s fresher, better.” Noted, I phoned the airline requesting special meals for both of us.

Meanwhile, Dixie was packing a rolling duffel dubbed “the beached whale.” She was still stuffing the Whale when we picked her up for departure. It was aptly named (no weight limits then), especially as she dressed to kill versus as a whale harpooner.

She was decked out in crisp linen and a hat for departure. I wore something comfortable.

We were in coach and I had the middle seat, but who cared?

The Riviera awaited! Once airborne, Dixie produced a small bottle of wine from her capacious hand luggage. “To celebrate!”

We surreptitiously toasted.

Aisle Seat shot us a look that said, “Couldn’t you wait?” — which we ignored. I produced Mrs. Field’s cookies purchased at the airport, which she refused. “I’m saving myself for our special meal,” she murmured.

Soon we heard our names called; the special meals! The hostess brought ours, ignoring the contraband wine. Aisle Seat stared as we excitedly opened them to find: A congealed lump of rice, black beans . . . and a whole kiwi, rolling manically around.

Aisle Seat gawped at our trays before smiling at his: beef tips on rice with steamed veggies, roll and cake.

Leaning over, Aisle Seat whispered, “Do you mind my asking what is wrong with you that you have to eat that?”

We wept with laughter. Giving up on the inedible, unseasoned food I vigorously attempted cutting the kiwi with my plastic knife. It escaped each attempt. “I’m hungry enough to just gnaw it,” I confessed.

More misadventure lay ahead.

Once in France, the Beached Whale proved challenging for coming travels, especially using trains along the Côte d’Azur. It was beastly navigating hilly destinations. Reaching our inn, I would arrive panting; me in jeans, Dixie in beautifully rumpled linen.

Controlling the Whale’s wonky wheels and heft left me perpetually famished. We found reasonable fare and delicious jug wine. That is, apart from my one order for fruits de mer, which in my terrible French, arrived raw.

Still, more tears of laughter.

Dixie, a former model, wafted along with aristocratic grace.

Men trailed in her wake.

Once in Genoa, noisily chattering women encircled and jostled Dixie as she stood perfectly quiet. A few blocks later she discovered she was robbed. She quoted Tennessee Williams’ last line in Streetcar: “I’ve always depended upon the kindness of strangers.”

Her wallet, relieved of cash, was kindly returned to the train station.

But, at her friend’s rental, I broke the Italian washing machine. A Candy washing machine. That required negotiations with the Candy Man for repairs. And an emptying of my cash.

Yet it was my solo return to Nice where the greatest travails awaited. I was pulled out of the boarding line by officials demanding a full body search. “But I’m an American citizen!” I protested. “I have rights!”

“Not here in France,” they replied, strangers to Tennessee’s dictum, wheeling a contraption like a portable shower for privacy as they proceeded with the search. They studied my luggage, sternly questioning hair dryer repairs during my travels. (As if any American, ever, repairs a hair dryer.)

“Nope. Only a Candy washing machine,” I answered.

Upon boarding, all eyes were upon the woman detainee who made the flight late. I kept my eyes forward, flush with embarrassment.

Soon after departure came a flurry of announcements. Lunch would soon be served.

“Special meal for Ms. Adams!” chirped a Frenchwoman.

I kept my face averted, studying the disappearing coastline.

When the hostess approached my seat bearing what was probably another congealed mass of starch, I feigned ignorance of any such request. “I’ve no dietary restrictions,” I replied stonily. “Perhaps there was a mistake.”

The hostess looked knowingly. Was that a wink?

“Perhaps so,” she said, mercifully retreating, holding the damnable meal aloft.

When the headline announcing the final Pan Am flight ran later that year, it was the end of a once grand airline. I folded the paper. “It was the gawdawful vegetarian meals,” I muttered.

If only I had told them before it was too late.

2024 Department Home Grown

Omnivorous Reader

OMNIVOROUS READER

A Sense of Time and Place

Bland Simpson’s “memoir” sees us anew

By Stephen E. Smith

Writers have twitches and tics of style and substance that identify them as distinctly as their DNA — and writers of exceptional talent are possessed by obsession, a focus on subject matter that elevates their work to a purity that establishes a commonality with their audience. North Carolina’s Thomas Wolfe was such a writer. So is Bland Simpson.

Simpson has earned a reputation as the chronicler of the North Carolina coast and sound country. His books include North Carolina: Land of Water, Land of Sky, The Great Dismal, and Into Sound Country, books that demonstrate his love of the state and the region where he was raised. He has appeared in numerous PBS (WUNC) documentaries, and his familiar voice graces the soundtrack to travelogues exploring the coastal region. In short, he’s the go-to guy when it comes to the history and evolution of coastal North Carolina. For many years, he’s been the Kenan Distinguished Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

In his latest book, Clover Garden: A Carolinian’s Piedmont Memoir, Simpson remains in familiar territory — he’s writing about the state — but he’s moved his focus west to an area outside Chapel Hill where he’s lived for the last 50 years.

Where is Clover Garden?

Head west out of Carrboro until you hit N.C. 54. Drive northwest into gentle farmland until you pass the old White Oak School. If there’s a sign for Swepsonville, you’ve gone too far. You can try that, but you won’t happen upon the place name that serves as the title of Simpson’s memoir. According to Simpson, Clover Garden is closer to Carrboro than Graham. He describes it as “a small, four-square-mile country community to the old Porter Tract of the low Old Fields, lying beside the Haw River just a few miles west of Chapel Hill and Carrboro. . . .” But in truth,readers will suspect that Clover Garden is anywhere in North Carolina’s vast rolling Piedmont, any plot of land inhabited by neighbors who live harmoniously in tight-knit communities.

“Memoir” in the title is used in the loosest sense. There’s maybe a thread of chronology at work, but Simpson takes an impressionistic approach to his writing, à la Manet (not Monet). Readers who remember their art history will be reminded of the details in Music in the Tuileries and The Café-Concert, images in which all the specifics matter to the whole.

Clover Garden is divided into 45 segments — short narratives, random observations, anecdotes, even gossip — that, when taken together, comprise the “memoir” and give the readers a sense of a particular time and place. These independent segments are skillfully illustrated and enhanced with photographs by Ann Cary Simpson, whose keen eye for specific and illuminating images has enhanced Clover Garden and her husband’s previous books.

If the impressionistic comparison seems a trifle pretentious, the narratives Simpson shares are not. He writes of pool halls, pig pickings, snowstorms, country stores, great horned owls, folklore, boatwrighting, cafes and bars, stars, and riderless horses, all the bits and pieces, practical and impractical, that comprise our daily lives. And if you’ve lived in the Piedmont, there’s a good chance you’ll know a few characters who contribute color to the storytelling. If you don’t recognize any of the characters, you know them well enough at the conclusion of the memoir, or you’ll recognize their counterpart in your circle of friends and acquaintances.

Simpson’s descriptions embody an easy blending of history with a touch of nostalgia as in this sepia-tinged recollection of old friends and poolhalls (one of which was frequented by this reviewer): “In time, Jake Mills showed me his two favorite pool halls, Happy’s on Cotanche Street in Greenville and Wilbur’s on Webb Avenue in Burlington. After school in the 1950s, he and Steve Coley used to play quarter games with the textile mill hands coming off first shift and drifting into Wilbur’s straight from work. The cigarette haze hung low below the green shades, and the cry of ‘Rack!’ was in the air, and the balls clicked and clacked, and, like many a youth before them, Jake and Steve picked up pin money in this Alamance County eight-ball haven.” Even Neville’s, a long established Moore County watering hole, receives a passing mention in Simpson’s narrative explorations.

Above all else, Simpson is a master prose stylist, a poet at heart. His sentences are graceful and well-tuned — thoroughly worked on to get that “worked on” feeling out — and laced with continual surprises to save them from predictability. Simpson is always a pleasure to read, and he can transport the reader to familiar ground as if it’s being seen anew. “. . . alongside dairy cows, beeves and horses in pastures meeting deep forests of white oaks and red oaks and pines, copses of them around country churches, and straight up tulip poplars and high-crown hickories, American beech and always sweet gum, muscadine vines everywhere, willows close to the waterlines of ponds where big blue heron stalk and hunt, ponds full of bass and bream, shellcrackers and pumpkinseed and catfish prowling the bottom . . . .”

Thomas Wolfe would approve.

2024 Department Omnivorous Reader

Wandering Billy

WANDERING BILLY

Down to a Fine Art

How Sam Fribush, Calvin Napper and Charlie Hunter came together to create new grooves with familiar sounds

By Billy Ingram

“And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.” — Friedrich Nietzsche

I was covering a shift in a comic book store one sunny Saturday when musician-songwriter Sam Fribush strolled over from his nearby home to discuss the latest steps he’s taken on his remarkable mellifluous journey. He, together with Grammy-winners guitarist-bassist Charley Hunter and drummer Calvin Napper, formed the Sam Fribush Organ Trio to create an album released in March of this year. People Please is a swingingly soulful suture of melodies reminiscent of a time, many decades ago, when rhythmic instrumental riffs ruled the Billboard Hot 100.

Raised in Sunset Hills, Fribush reflects on his musical undertones. “My parents are both self-taught, old-time folk musicians, so I grew up with music in the house. Folk Appalachian music is maybe the first line in my DNA.” While attending Weaver Academy from 2009 to 2013, Fribush began seriously focusing on piano under the instruction of Mark Freundt. “They had a block schedule, so I just sat at the keyboard for an hour-and-a-half every day and practiced. That was a big part of getting my technical facility together.”

From there, he studied music as an undergrad at the prestigious New England Conservatory in Boston, simultaneously picking up local gigs. “That’s when I started playing the Hammond organ, in a Black Baptist church in the south part of Massachusetts,” Fribush says. “A really tough learning environment, got my ass kicked in all the best ways.”

A move to New Orleans led to the musician pounding keys in dimly lit clubs on Bourbon and Frenchmen Streets. “The school of hard knocks,” is how Fribush describes that experience. “Without rehearsed material, having to know tons and tons of songs, just using my ears, that’s when I really got my ass kicked!”

After the pandemic hit, like a surprising number of other talented individuals (a blessing in disguise it turns out), he returned to Greensboro. “I love being back here,” Fribush says. “It’s a great home base of operation. I moved to College Hill and joined the band Hiss Golden Messenger from Durham.” Relocating proved fortuitous. “I also met Charlie Hunter, who randomly moved to Greensboro when I did. We happened to be into the same type of music and started playing together.”

When Fribush and I spoke that afternoon, he had just returned from laying down tracks for his next album in Richmond. “I’m on a little bit of marathon recording new stuff right now,” he explains. “I’ve been really going down a deep rabbit hole of writing. It’s been rewarding, having all these demos.” In the Richmond recording studio, he connected with some of the guys from Butcher Brown, a jazz quintet from the area. “We were just pulling songs off my demo list. It was really fun to have these original sparks, and then see what they turn into.” The week following our convo, he was jetting off to Denver to record with producer and drummer Adam Deitch from the funktastic ensemble Lettuce.

Currently, Fribush is especially looking forward to jamming once again with his People Please collaborators at the N.C. Folk Festival. When he was first approached about performing, he says, “I was like, well, I would really like to get those guys in on it, too.” The only other live performance this trio has played as a unit was an album release party at Flat Iron, but, he notes, “Whenever the three of us get together, it’s always awesome.”

Taking a break from touring with TMF (The Music Forever), formerly of Maze featuring Frankie Beverly Winston-Salem resident Calvin Napper is renowned for beating out percussive blasts for gospel greats Kirk Franklin, Shirley Caesar, and CeCe Winans, to name a few. He was awarded a Grammy for his contribution to Donnie McClurkin’s Psalms, Hymns & Spiritual Songs. “Calvin Napper is a natural born drummer,” Smooth Jazz Daily opines. “Although addicted to gospel music, he pursues his musical destination in smooth jazz or, more precisely, funk.”

Cruising into Latin and Caribbean inspired grooves on recordings with D’Angelo, Frank Ocean, Mos Def, and John Mayer, world-renowned Jazz and R&B guitarist-bassist Charlie Hunter’s signature Novax seven- and eight-string instruments allow him to play both bass and guitar simultaneously. “I’ve been a fan of Charlie Hunter for a really long time,” John Mayer once said about after having the chance to record “In Repair” with him. “One of the values that he’s kind of instilled in me, just from my being a fan of his, is his willingness to want to get into other musical situations than what he’s familiar with.”

On The Charlie Hunter Quartet’s highly-acclaimed 2001 Blue Note album Songs of the Analog Playground, it was Hunter’s transcendent interpretations of Roxy Music’s “More Than This” and Nick Drake’s hauntingly sensual “Day Is Done,” both featuring then unknown vocalist, Norah Jones, that introduced the future nine-time Grammy winning singer-songwriter to the world. A year later, Jones’ debut album became one of the best-selling platters of all time. Intertwined on People Please, these three virtuosos have created an extraordinary sonic playground reminiscent of those ubiquitous, highly infectious instrumentals of old. Think “Soul Bossa Nova” (the theme from Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery) by Quincy Jones; Oscar Peterson’s jaunty, unparalleled ivory-tinkling wizardry across musical genres; Memphis ’60s Southern grooves typified by “Green Onions” from Booker T. & the MG’s; in addition to that sweet Philly soul sound of the ’70s. “Philly is where most of the Hammond players were from,” Fribush notes about the keyboard that funked up the 1970s before soulless synthesizers desensitized our ears. “Jimmy Smith, Shirley Scott, yeah, that’s the sound. Those are my idols.”

People Please may be Sam Fribush’s first assemblage of all original material, but even the cover tunes on his two previous records are, for the most part, practically undetectable as such, owing to his singularly preternatural approach. “That was the point,” Fribush says. “Finding deep cuts then arranging them in interesting ways.”

This musical artist has somehow managed to make that instantly recognizable Hammond B-3 Tonewheel’s harmonic resonance fresh again. One reason that sound is relatively uncommon today? The manufacturer stopped making them a half-century ago. “Most of my Hammonds are from late-’50s, early-’60s,” which means that, out of necessity, Fribush has to repair and refurbish those organs and antiquated amps himself. “They are 100 percent analog, no chipboard. It’s all tubes, pretty straightforward. In the jazz and funk organ idiom, it’s a hard sound to replicate because of the warmth of the Hammond.”

Are the Sam Fribush Organ Trio’s electronic earworms burrowing us back to a post-synth future, 21st-century beachmusic style? They may be the closest thing to a so-called “supergroup” the Folk Fest proffers this year.

Fun Fact: in order for a band that he once managed to get paid, Billy Ingram was forced to confront Eddie Nash, one of LA’s most notorious mass murderers (Wonderland), who was crying poor behind a wall of at least $200,000 in bundled bills. Best believe band got paid!

2024 Department Wandering Billy

Birdwatch

BIRDWATCH

Southbound and Down

Grasspipers forage on farms and fields

By Susan Campbell

As the long days of summer wane here in the Piedmont and Sandhills of North Carolina, we have scores of birds preparing for that long southbound journey we refer to as fall migration. Thousands of birds pass by, both day and night, headed for wintering grounds deep in the Southern Hemisphere. Flocks of medium-bodied shorebirds, dropping down to replenish their reserves, are one seemingly unlikely sight. They may stay a few hours or a few days, depending on the weather and the abundance of food available to them. At first glance, you might think these long-legged birds are lost — far from the coast where a variety of sandpipers are commonplace. But once you take a good look, you will realize these are birds of grassland habitat, not sand flats.

Referred to as “grasspipers” by birders, these species forage on a wide variety of invertebrates found in grassy expanses. They breed in open northern terrain, in some cases all the way up into the Arctic. They are moving through as they migrate to grassland habitat in southern South America. Although some may be seen along our coastline, they are more likely to be found in flocks or loose groups at inland airports, sod farms, playing fields and perhaps even tilled croplands.

Come late August and early September, armed with binoculars or, better yet, a powerful spotting telescope, you can find these cryptically colored birds without having to travel too far from home. They are indeed easy to miss unless you know where to look at the right time. Flocks often include a mix of species, so be ready to sort through each and every bird, lest you overlook one of the rarer individuals. When it comes to shorebirds as a group, many of the dozens of species are tricky to identify so, if you’re relatively new to birding, I suggest you arrange to join a more accomplished birder to start.

The most common and numerous species without a doubt is the killdeer. Its dark upper parts contrast with white underparts, but it’s the double neck ring that gives it away. This spunky bird, whose name is its call, nests (if you can call a rudimentary scrape in the gravel a nest) on disturbed ground such as unpaved roadways and parking lots throughout North Carolina. Flocks of hundreds of birds are not uncommon. Frequently other species are mixed in as well. In the Sandhills, the sod farm in Candor hosts large numbers of killdeer around Labor Day. Check them all and you will likely be rewarded with something different mixed in.

The plover family, to which the killdeer belongs, consists of squat, short-necked and billed birds of several species. The semipalmated plover is a close cousin. This slightly smaller species sports only a single neck ring and curiously, individuals have slightly webbed (or palmate) feet. They can actually swim short distances when in wetter habitat and are thus more versatile foragers.

The most curious are the obligate grassland shorebirds, which include the well-camouflaged buff-breasted sandpiper and the upland sandpiper. Both nest in the drier prairies of Canada and spend the winter months mainly in the pampas of Argentina. “Buffies” are a buff-brown all over and have delicate-looking heads, short, thin bills and a distinctive ring around the eye. “Uppies” are brownish and have small heads as well, but with larger eyes and both a longer bill and longer legs. These two species are thought to be declining — most likely due to habitat loss on both continents. If you miss the chance to get out in search of inland shorebirds this fall, don’t fret. They will move through again come spring, although in smaller numbers. Winter will take its toll, but those who do make it back our way will be in vibrant plumage as they wing their way northward to create yet a new generation of grasspipers north of the border.

2024 Birdwatch Department

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