Month: January 2017

Shaving Grace

And new life on South Elm Street

By Billy Eye

“No one goes there nowadays, it’s too crowded.” — Yogi Berra

My pal Taylor Bays and Eye had a notion to visit the old high-rise Hilton Hotel across from Greensboro College, now a luxe residential facility dubbed The District at West Market. I wondered if the folks there read O.Henry magazine’s feature a few months back about Elvis Presley’s experience encamped in their top floor suite during the early to mid-1970s when he thrilled standing room only crowds at the Coliseum.

According to the receptionist that story was indeed quite popular, and it turns out the lady who lives in the penthouse suite resides there specifically because of that Elvis connection. Even more fascinating is the mystery as to what, or who, has, on occasion, been rearranging the lobby furniture in the early morning hours. Consensus is, it’s the restless spirit of Elvis Presley at play. As good a guess as any given that security cameras consistently reveal no one in that area when any impromptu redecorating occurs.

On a related but sadder note Francine York, Elvis’s co-star in Kissin’ Cousins (1964) quoted in that O.Henry article, passed away a few weeks ago. She was 80. Francine was a sparkling comedienne and dramatic actress known for her roles on Batman, Bewitched, Lost in Space, Columbo and dozens of other classic TV shows and movies. While I’ll miss her upbeat effervescence and imaginative Christmas cards (This year she posed as Wonder Woman), Hollywood has lost a consummate party hostess, the very embodiment of that charm, comaraderie, good humor and, most especially in her case, glamor that defined
Tinsel Town’s golden era.

***

The other day as I was passing the 400 block of East Market — a compact shopping plaza constructed around 1951 — the ancient railroad overpass nearby reminded me that decades ago it was the line of demarcation separating blacks and whites. In fact, blacks would pass through one side of the bridge while whites traversed the other, hence the dual tunnels. In an interview conducted a few years ago, longtime downtown restaurateur Minas Dascalakis (Princess Cafe) remembered what that was like back in the 1940s: “You go down East Market Street there is a bridge, you know what they used to call it? The Bullpen. You’re supposed to be like a bull to go through, that’s how rough it was. Always had two police officers. One very big guy was Lt. Mitchum, he could pick up a 200-pound man, lift him up and throw him on the ground. There were no questions, no questions. There was another officer, a black man about 350 in weight, on the other side of the Bullpen.”

Strolling along the southern side of what used to be the Bullpen, I remember when the area was the erstwhile home to the Eat Well Café and The Sportsman, a pool hall. Today it’s mostly in transition but one storefront is as lively and vibrant as any time before. At Service Barber Shop, proprietor Willie Brooks has been clipping and buzzing for more than forty years, and for a long time before that at his other nearby location. I knew I was in for an authentic experience when he shot me that look one gives when a salty cracker walks in off the street. You know, like, “What’s this jerk selling?”

Before Willie Brooks opened in 1975, African-Americans were largely discouraged from owning a business west of the tracks just a few yards away. He operates a traditional barber shop in every sense, from the chrome and leather swivel chairs to the combs soaking in blue Barbicide; undoubtedly a place where community news is disseminated in much the same way it was before the Internet simultaneously connected and separated us.

Farther west on the 300 block of East Market, finishing touches are being applied to a cavernous event space christened the 1922 Carolina Cadillac Company Building where Adamson Cadillac Olds sold Fleetwoods and Rocket 88 Coupes before it became the first home of another venerable Caddie dealer. However, as Mr. Brooks tells me, “They wouldn’t sell black people a Cadillac back then.” Ironic given the name of the dealership.

***

Alarmed that a “For Lease” sign was tacked to the front of Glitters on the corner of South Elm and West Washington. I stopped in to talk with Desiree Brooks about what I hoped wasn’t another business closing in the city center. Her father Gary Barskey opened what was once euphemistically known as a “head shop” in the former Silver’s Five and Dime a quarter century ago. “Downtown is not very retail-friendly,” she told me. Desiree expressed what a lot of people are saying these days: “Restaurants and bars are all that’s down here now. But after you eat, or before you eat, you like to wander around where there are shops you can go in. There needs to be more of a balance.” The good news is that Glitters is moving farther down South Elm to where Coe’s Grocery sold produce beginning in the 1930s, close to The Railyard off of Lewis Street, where all the action is right now.  OH

Billy Eye would love to hear any suggestions you might have as to where he should wander next, write to him at billy@tvparty.com.

The Gull Next Door

Winter brings ring-billed gulls inland

By Susan Campbell

Gulls? Here in the middle of the state? It may be puzzling but, indeed, you may see a few soaring over the nearby mall or standing around on the local playing fields.  Come late November — then through December and reaching their peak sometime in January — the most common species of inland gulls, ring-billed, predictably swells each winter. Highly adaptable, they happily hang out at landfills, parking lots and farm fields. Ring-billed gulls are medium-sized, easy to overlook — unless you are a birdwatcher. Flocks can easily number in the hundreds and, nowadays, are largely unaffected by human activity. Of course, it is the actions of people that have facilitated the species’ winter range expansion over the past century. 

Ring-billed gulls are characterized by a white head and chest, gray back and black vertical band around the bill. When perched, their black wingtips, with white spots, extend beyond the squared-off tail. The legs, like the bill, are a bright yellow. Wintering adults will exhibit gray-brown flecking on the head. Immature birds will have varying amounts of brownish streaking as well as pinkish legs and bill. It will take three full years for individuals to acquire adult plumage.

Ring-billed gulls nest far to the north, on small islands across the northern tier of the United States and throughout much of Canada. They use sparsely vegetated habitat and are often found sharing islands with other species of gulls and terns. Ring-billeds are known to return to their natal area to breed, often nesting mere feet from where they nested the year before. They are also likely to return to familiar wintering grounds as well. They have a highly tuned sense of direction, using a built-in compass as well as landmarks (such as rivers and mountain ranges) to successfully navigate in spring and fall.

In the early 1900s, the millinery trade, egg collectors and human encroachment in habitats significantly affected the species’ population numbers. But with the passage of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act in 1917, ring-billed gull numbers began to stabilize. No longer was it legal to shoot adults for their feathers or collect their eggs for food. Additionally, introduction of fishes such as the alewife and inundation of new habitat in the western Great Lakes increased breeding productivity in the decades that followed.

Not only has the increase in garbage dumps and farmlands created more foraging habitat for these birds but also new reservoirs. Although ring-billeds prefer insects, worms, fish, small rodents, as well as grains and berries, they are not picky eaters — and therefore highly adaptable. Reproductive success, thanks to an abundance of food, has been even higher in the last thirty years — especially around the Great Lakes and the Eastern United States. As a result, this species has become a nuisance in some areas. Control measures (scarecrows, noisemakers, materials that move in the wind) have been employed but with very little success.

Large flocks of ring-billed gulls are likely to get the attention of birdwatchers come late winter. It is then that other species may get mixed in. It is possible to tease out a herring gull or perhaps a great black-backed gull from the dozens sitting on the pavement or floating on a local lake, if one has good optical equipment — and a lot of patience.  OH

Susan would love to receive your wildlife sightings and photos.  She can be contacted by email at susan@ncaves.com, or by calling (910) 949-3207.

Mystery Date

A love story incognito

By Maria Johnson

Want to hear a cool love story?

OK, but no real names and dates.

Because if you see real names and dates, you’re eyes will glaze over and your mind will dash away, and you’ll feel no connection.

Which you should.

Because there is one — to Greensboro and to life in general.

So, here is the story of a couple – we’ll call them Dee and Jim — who were each other’s second loves. Bonus points if you figure out their real identities before the end. If you want to cheat as you go, check the footnotes.

Dee was born in Greensboro, in a very religious home. Her family moved away when she was a baby. Eventually, they landed in Philadelphia, where her father went bankrupt.

Times were tough, so Dee’s mother took in renters. Meanwhile, Dee married a lawyer, her first husband. He was a good guy. They had two boys.

Right after Dee’s second son was born, a nasty illness swept the city (1). People were hurling blood and dropping like flies. Dee’s in-laws died. Then her husband died. Then her infant son died on the same day as her husband.

Boom, black hole. Four family members gone.

Dee was 25 and widowed, with a toddler son. They went to live with her mother.

One of her mother’s tenants, a guy named Aaron, had a friend from college who wanted to meet Dee. So Aaron introduced them. Incidentally, Aaron later shot and killed a dude and somehow avoided going to jail, but that’s another story, maybe even a hit Broadway musical (2).

But back to Dee and Jim.

They would have seemed like an odd couple to most people.

Jim was seventeen years older than Dee, and he was generally described as taciturn, which is a nice way of saying he was a cold fish.

Dee, on the other hand, was ebullient, which is a fancy way of saying she was full of life.

Jim was a little guy, 5-foot-4, maybe 100 pounds soaking wet. A real shrimp.

Dee was 5-foot-7, and let’s just say she was a substantial woman.

Jim was crackling smart, a well-known writer and thinker (3).

Dee didn’t have much schooling, but she had off-the-charts people skills.

Both of them had suffered broken hearts. Jim had dated lots of women, and he’d been engaged once, but his fiancée jilted him.

Dee hadn’t dated much, but she’d lost half a family.

They hit it off. Jim wooed her in writing. Sometimes, he recruited other people to write for him. One time, he got Dee’s cousin to write: “He thinks so much of you in the day that he has lost his tongue, at night he dreams of you and starts in his sleep calling on you to relieve his flame for he burns to such an excess that he will be shortly consumed.”

Mmmmhmmm. He had it bad.

Jim proposed to Dee in writing.

I’m not sure of his exact words, but it was along the lines of, “Will u marry me?,” only in very nice handwriting.

He was double-espresso-and-a-Red-Bull nervous, waiting for her reply, which also came in writing. She was traveling, you know, taking her time.

But, of course, she said yes. One can only assume that she didn’t want him to burst into flames. Plus, he was down with adopting her son.

But the marriage cost Dee: Her church kicked her out because Jim wasn’t one of them, but she was OK with it. She’d probably had her fill of the church after they tossed her pops for not paying his debts. And frankly, being outside the church freed her up to chuck the grubbies and dress with some flair.

She and Jim moved to Washington, and Jim took a big job (4). He traveled
a lot, and met a lot of foreign big shots.

Dee was an outstanding hostess, one of those people who remembers everyone’s name and makes you feel at ease no matter where you come from or what you think about politics and such. She entertained a lot, and I mean a lot, mainly because the president and vice president of the company were widowers, and when it came time for soirées, they were like, “Boiled potatoes, anyone (5)?”

So they gave Dee control, and she did it right. She threw lavish dinners and weeknight cocktail parties called “squeezes” because everyone wanted to squeeze in. Even Jim, who was a rather uptight fellow, loosened up in her presence, showing off his knowledge of wines and telling funny stories.

Like I said, Dee was a live wire, a bit of a rebel. She wore turbans spiked with feathers. She befriended people from different social classes. She gave money to charities. She served ice cream atop little custom-made dishes that looked like urns. She dipped snuff. She was an all-around spunky lass.

Jim loved her.

And she loved him.

They chased each other around the house. Sometimes, houseguests saw her pick him up and carry him around, laughing. In his letters, he sent her “a thousand kisses,” even though she dipped snuff, which is saying something.

Maybe because she was liberal with affection — or more likely because other people were gunning for his job — people whispered about her carrying on with the president. The whispers were never proven. You know how people are.

Eventually, when Jim got the top job, he and Dee moved to a huge house, and she decked the halls. Called in designers. Hung red velvet drapes. The works (6).

Then, just when Dee had the place looking dope, war broke out (7).

One day, the shooters stalked Dee’s neighborhood. The security guards at her house split. Jim was off, fighting. Dee was left with a few others (8). They were like, “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

And Dee was like, “Not without that painting?”

And they were like, “WHHAAAAAAAA?”

And Dee was like, “That’s a really important painting on the wall, and we’re not leaving without it (9).”

So they tried to take the painting, but it was bolted to the wall.

And Dee was like, “Bust up the frame, and take the canvas.”

And they were like “What-EVER.”

So they busted up the frame and got the canvas, and one of them started to roll up the canvas, and she pitched a fit.

“Don’t roll it up, knucklehead! You’ll ruin it!” she said, or words to that effect.

And they were like, “If you weren’t so cool, and we weren’t so afraid of being shot for running, we’d leave your sorry turbaned ass here.”

Again, I paraphrase.

The enemy set fire to the house a few hours after Dee left.

Later, she found Jim and they returned to a roofless, smoldering heap.

The acrid smell of smoke clung to Dee, and she never forgave the rat bastards who torched her crib (10).

But she and Jim hung in there. They started over again. They found another place to live, and Jim carried on with his career.

When he retired, they moved to the country. He worked as a university president for a while (11). He died at age 85. Dee moved back to D.C., mortgaged the farm, and lived a somewhat impoverished life, mainly because her son, the one whom Jim had adopted, turned out to be a gambler and a drunk. You’re welcome, kiddo.

Dee died in D.C. at the age of 81. She was buried there, but later, her remains were dug up and moved to a Virginia graveyard, where her spirited bones lie next to Jim’s (12).

R.I.P., Dolley and James Madison.

Maria Johnson is a contributing editor of O.Henry. If you want to know more about Dee, check out the Dolley Madison Collection at the Greensboro History Museum Admission is free.  OH

(Endnotes)

1 Yellow fever

2 Aaron was Aaron Burr. The musical is Hamilton.

3 He wrote most of the Federalist Papers and the Constitution, and he wrote and sponsored the Bill of Rights. He’s known as the Father of the Constitution.

4 Secretary of State under Thomas Jefferson

5 The widowers were President Thomas Jefferson; first-term veep Aaron Burr; and second-term veep George Clinton (no, not the funky one).

6 The house was the first White House.

7 The War of 1812

8 Her assistants and house slaves

9 The painting was Gilbert Stuart’s famous portrait of George Washington

10 The British

11 At the University of Virginia

12 At Montpelier, their former plantation, now a National Historic Landmark in Orange County, Virginia.

Hold the Aioli

And don’t even talk to me about sweet potatoes

By Susan Kelly

My first fast food was pineapple rings served straight from the squatty green Del Monte can alongside Chef Boyardee little pizzas warmed in the toaster oven. This was fast food because my mother was having a dinner party and she needed to feed us fast. I loved that combo of metallic sweet and salty acidic crunch. Today those flavors would have some fancy pants term like “sweet and savory.” My foodie sister-in-law in Raleigh would understand. I don’t even understand her tweets.

Catawba rabbit w vibrant pureed cararots, bl trumpets with earthy cihianti….,,,

Long Johnw blubry+ricotta fr@monutsDonuts is my style; NC sweet potato+horchata are destined for my boys’ bfast

Jennifer, the sister-in-law, is one of those people who just know culinary minutiae: that adding crabmeat to an otherwise ordinary potato soup will be delicious, or that arugula marries well with watermelon. I have never been part of that cognoscenti. I can, however, use words like cognoscenti with confidence. I can also coin cooking words. Nart, for example. Nart is a verb that describes using a food processor, whose etymology stems from the proper noun Cuisinart. Correct usage looks like this: “I narted the rotten bananas for banana bread.”

My family as a whole expends a lot of time and effort — and opinions — on food. When we’re all at the beach together, my sisters take pictures of their lunches. Truly. It’s a competition of plate tastes and appearance. Some three-bean salad at 4 o’clock, crackers with pimento cheese at 5. A half chicken salad sammie, several bread and butter pickles, a wee dab of leftover tomato pie from the night before, ditto the cold shrimp with a light coating of cocktail sauce, some of those suspiciously slick pre-cut knuckle-sized carrots with hummus. “I am so bummed,” one sister will say, studying the other’s plate, because she forgot there was some roasted okra hidden in the far corner of the fridge. When I get home from the beach, the Fig Newtons in the cupboard have gone hard as bullets. I am so bummed.

At 9, my youngest sister said, “When I grow up, I’m going to make enough money to buy nice things.” Like what? I asked, expecting cars, clothes, jewels. “Heinz ketchup instead of Hunt’s,” she said. Talk about your worthy aspirations! While other budding scientists were building weather stations, my nephew’s eighth-grade science project was titled “What Method Works Best?” It featured various old chestnuts about how to chop onions without weeping: holding the onion under water while cutting (I ask you, who manages that feat?), and holding a wad of white bread in your mouth. The winner was simply to don swim goggles, always a fashionable kitchen look. My question is this: Why not just nart the dang onions?

As an adviser for the roundly dreaded college application essay, I was finally rewarded with the perfect prompt one year: What is your favorite comfort food and why? At last, something my students and I could metaphorically sink our teeth into. Why labor over Uncle Jimmy as my Most Respected Person or an Eagle Scout project as my Proudest Achievement when you could write about all the varieties of comfort food? The road trip comfort food of Nabs and a Coke; the getting over the 24-hour throw-ups comfort food of scrambled eggs and grits; the tailgate comfort food of fried chicken; the Christmas morning comfort food of Moravian Sugar Cake; the late night comfort food of cold pizza; the — wait. My pupil has fled. Was it the mention of the throw-ups? Or maybe he divined that leadership qualities can’t really be addressed by writing about barbecue. Well, it’s been said before: College is wasted on the young.

I suppose food can only be written about with authority by famous television cooks. Those celebrity chefs, however, are a fraud, and real cooks know it. Real cooks cuss when the gnocchi clots into one big soggy dumpling. Real cooks shuck, silk and shave a dozen ears of Silver Queen for stewed corn to take to a sick friend and cry when they realize the milk they added had gone bad, just as they realize that they accidentally used a candy thermometer instead of a meat thermometer and it melted inside the pork roast. Real cooks have kitchen shelves that look like mine, where the cookbooks are lined up like an exhibit on domestication, representatives of each era of my marriage and culinary efforts.

Here are the homely (dowdy, matronly) spiral-bound paperback Junior League volumes, the recipes featuring cream of mushroom soup and Velveeta, and titled “Ladies Day Out Stew,” laughable and tender. Then comes the new wave, the Silver Palates, with charming pen-and-ink drawings, when arugula and aioli were a different language altogether. All those good intentions — Try this! I’ve innocently written in the margins — still captive, still somehow alive, in those cookbooks.

But never mind the effort and fuss, here to save us is Martha Stewart’s Quick Cook, proving you can be gourmet and effortless too. Beside Martha are the cookbooks dedicated to a single topic: Pasta Perfect, Soups, Grilling, Desserts. Now, it seems, we’ve returned to the Junior League: fancier hardback versions with enticing, lush color photographs of Kentucky Derby Pickup Supper or Oscar Night Buffet. Still the party menus. Still the names of contributors. And still my hopeful handwritten intentions: Try this!  OH

In a former life, Susan Kelly published five novels, won some awards, did some teaching, and made a lot of speeches. These days, she’s freelancing and making up for all that time she spent indoors writing novels.

The Shining

The spirited life of a holler-back girl

By Jane Borden

When I left New York, I’d intended to return to North Carolina. But love and marriage got in the way, and I followed my new husband to Tennessee, which is at least North Carolina adjacent. He took a teaching job at Sewanee: The University of the South, located in the woods of Monteagle Mountain.

Very quickly I decided to make moonshine and open a speakeasy. As one does. Like hundreds of shiners before me, I was living in the woods of Tennessee and in need of money, which led me to discern the obvious choice. I would be like Al Capone, who, legend has it, kept a home in Monteagle — the midpoint between Miami and Chicago — during Prohibition so he could stop for a rest and pick up more hooch along the way. I would be like Hamper McBee, the area’s most famous modern moonshiner and balladeer, who plied his trade at hidden homemade stills during the ’70s, singing of drunkenness while he stirred the mash. I would be like Jasper, the large bearded man I’d befriended at a local farmers’ market, who’s fond of camo overalls and agreed to teach me to make wine from peaches. 

My bar would be classy, with a soundtrack mix of blues and indie rock, and a menu of classic cocktails with modern twists. I investigated demand, which was high since we lived in a semi-dry county, and costs, which were also high as I would largely be reselling store-bought liquor, making my endeavor doubly illegal. Then I drew up a business plan, and was exploring potential locations, when two fiery signs appeared. One, Jasper’s house burned to the ground. Two, the restaurant Pearl’s, which had also burned to the ground three years prior, announced its reopening — and that it would have a liquor license, the only one in town.

Fires in the area are common, thanks to rugged DIY architecture, insurance fraud, renegade justice for mountain grudges, and the hundreds of meth labs that have earned Grundy County the status of meth capital of the world. I decided, therefore, that my speakeasy was a phoenix, which perished with Jasper and was reborn inside Pearl’s. And I humbly pointed myself to a lawful path. I stopped by the construction site, with a mocked-up cocktail menu in hand, and got myself hired tending bar at Pearl’s, on Highway 41 on the Cumberland Plateau of South Central Tennessee.

As the classic-cocktail revival took hold in the early aughts, I was first in line at Manhattan speakeasies, laughing at their pretentious lists of conduct rules, but giving them all of my money nonetheless. Housemade bitters, shrubs and purées; strangely scented liqueurs from far-flung countries; and top-shelf booze packaged in work-of-art bottles: I was intoxicated.

But only as a consumer. There’s no reason to invest in stocking a
New York home bar when a mustachioed mixologist is on every corner doing it better than you, and looking smarter in suspenders. But in a small Southern town, if you want something not indigenous to the area — like bagels or racial diversity — you must manufacture it yourself. Within a month of living in Sewanee, thanks to a couple of liquor-store trips to Nashville, I transformed our small wooden stand-alone bar into an amateur mixologist’s dream. My appreciation became a hobby, which is largely why we kept throwing parties. Nathan and I couldn’t consume it all ourselves.

And so I began to want my own speakeasy. I knew, however, that simply making drinks — no matter how crafted or unique — would never be enough of a draw, since anyone can google recipes and make his or her own trip to Nashville. But then Jasper mentioned peach wine. Even if no one actually ordered much of it, curiosity about an epicurean moonshine wine might pull them in, like those dancing balloon men outside of car lots that fill with air and then deflate, over and over — except classy. Plus, the process was much less intimidating than building a still and acquiring 50-pound bags of rye. From what I recall, it required lots of pots, several buckets and maybe a bathtub? Jasper detailed the recipe and process for me one morning at the Saturday farmers’ market. It sounded pretty simple. We decided to find a time for me to come to his house and apprentice him. He gave me his number. Then his house burned down.

Like the Appalachians to its east, the Cumberland Plateau has been moonshine country for as long as it’s been inhabited. The craggy and unpredictable conglomerate-rock geology of the plateau and its coves makes the land largely impassable and fundamentally unfit for development. The area is a treasure of virgin forest for this reason, and not because of environmental stewardship or a benefactor’s largesse. The University was only founded there, before the Civil War, because a logging company determined it couldn’t move equipment through the land, and dumped the acres on the Episcopal Church for a tax break.

In short, there are ample nooks for hiding stills. Shakerag Hollow, a cove at the edge of Sewanee’s property, was named for this tradition. When you wanted a bottle of hooch during Prohibition, so the story goes, you stood at the edge of the bluff, shook a rag in the air, left your money on a rock and returned the next day to collect the bottle sitting in its place. I like to imagine the rag was white, as if customers were surrendering to the booze. “I give up, whiskey: You’re too delicious.”

Today, state-park–designated trails frequently pass remnants of stills from the moonshining heyday, the whereabouts of which, at the time, were violently guarded secrets. The practice remained, even long after Prohibition. A friend of ours, Jean, is fond of riding her horse through the cove abutting her property. She recalls coming upon an active still once, decades ago, and meeting the business end of a rifle, which convinced her to turn back and forget where she’d been.

Today, the trade still flourishes. Nathan and I once saw a makeshift marketplace open for business in a shady corner of Party Cove. Also known as the Redneck Riviera, Party Cove has cropped up in more than a couple of popular country songs. It is a section of Percy Priest Lake — a Tennessee Valley Authority lake, a flooded hollow created by a WPA project during the Depression — in which groups of motorboats anchor and tie buoys to one another, for the purpose of swimming and multi-watercraft partying. Nathan and I were lucky enough to visit Party Cove on occasion, where we turned our life jackets upside down and sat in them like diapers in the water; where sound systems compete and whichever song makes bikini-clad girls dance becomes the winner; and where bottles of Fireball Cinnamon Whisky float along beside you in the water and/or are poured directly into your mouth.

One afternoon at Party Cove, we began to notice that people were swimming, one at a time, to and from a corner dense with brush. A pair of binoculars revealed that each swimmer held one hand above the water, clutching cash on the way over, and a mason jar on the way back. And I’d thought New York was lawless.

The romance wooed me: homemade whiskey, the black market, the taste of apple-pie moonshine, diluted and sweet enough to sip straight from the jar, which I did in the passenger seat, all the way home from Percy Priest that day.

My speakeasy endeavor wasn’t just about money and craft cocktails. It would be a connection to the land, a well that was dug directly into a sense of place, a way for me to finally feel at home in this new and foreign land. Moonshining is so deeply ingrained in the community that getting caught probably wouldn’t even get my husband fired. Plus, if I was making drinks all night, I’d be less likely to consume them.

But, as previously detailed, the dream deflated like a dancing man made of air who’s lost his hose. And then the phoenix: Pearl’s. The mountain filled with talk of its fine-dining aspirations and its new head-chef and co-owner, who hailed from the culinary scene in Northern California. She knew the mixology movement. She liked the menu of drinks I brought to my interview. I convinced her I could expand the market for them. She hired me. So began my days of tending bar on the plateau, where change comes as slowly as the erosion of the surrounding mountains that created the plateau to begin with — which is to say that most of the customers ordered beer.  OH

You can find Greensboro native Jane Borden, author of I Totally Meant To Do That, in L.A. now — or at JaneBorden.com or via twitter.com/JaneBorden.

Welcome to the Year of James Baldwin

Scuppernong’s nod to another prominent figure in American letters

Here at Scuppernong Books we dedicate each year to a particular writer we are fond of. We deemed 2015 “The Year of Herman Melville” and last year belonged to the work of Flannery O’Connor. We couldn’t be happier to announce that 2017 is hereby declared “The Year of James Baldwin.” To be sure, there’s no particular anniversary of  Baldwin’s works we’re celebrating; we simply feel that his novels, plays, poetry and essays are worth acknowledging. And reading. Watch for dozens of talks, book clubs, readings, film screenings and lectures throughout the year at Scuppernong. Let’s start it off with an appreciation of the Baldwin oeuvre, along with some associated writers.

Go Tell It On The Mountain (Vintage International, $15) is, without question, a classic of 20th-century American literature, but it’s a book most of us probably read too early — usually in high school — to truly appreciate. Blatantly autobiographical, the novel tells the story of John Grimes, a black teenager growing up in the Harlem of the 1930s. All of the themes and methods that Baldwin would sharpen over his career are present here: the brutal clarity, the precise prose rooted in the rhythms of spirituals and the Pentecostal church, plus the unsparing vision of himself and the world around him. We get the flavor and the disquietude of the time and the full-borne struggle of a teenager wrestling with his sense of self while battling the restraints of his family, his culture and his church. Go Tell It On The Mountain culminates with one of the most searing and honest descriptions of a spiritual epiphany we’ve ever read.

First published in 1962, The Fire Next Time (Vintage International, $13.95) can be read today with only the slightest shift in context or concession for its time. It is no less cogent and masterful than it was over fifty years ago, and no less pertinent to the situation we find ourselves in today as Americans. Divided into two longs essays, “My Dungeon Shook: Letter to My Nephew on the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Emancipation” and “Down at the Cross: Letter from a Region in My Mind,” the book is a brilliant act of planting a flag, of staking a personal territory that will be explored for years to come. Baldwin’s flag is ablaze: with anger, with passion, with empathy and with a struggling sense of mercy for all of us. One of the things he wants to do here is to situate what was then The Race Problem squarely in the laps of white people; and to deny the idea that African Americans are somehow responsible for the racism that oppresses them. But, he also wants to offer his nephew, and all of us, some form of hope. For Baldwin, however, that hope can only be claimed after a cold, clear-eyed assessment of the situation.

Ta-Nehisi Coates has a thing or two to say about the persistence of institutional racism. His much-lauded 2015 book, Between the World and Me (Spiegel & Grau, $25), openly echoes the structure of The Fire Next Time and retains the bold anger and attention to the real problem: the racist attitudes and policies that have resurfaced in certain segments of American society. Coates’ depiction of the tentative place black bodies have in our culture — the constant unpredictable nature of violence aimed at the black body — is powerful and convincing. This book is a thoughtful call to action and an attempt to secure a safe space for his son’s future.

In Who Can Afford to Improvise: James Baldwin and Black Music, the Lyric and the Listeners (Fordham University Press, $29.95) Ed Pavlic explores not only the effects of spirituals, the blues and jazz on Baldwin’s development as a person and a writer, but also how his style began to infuse the rhythms, the repetitions, the spirit, of these evolving genres. Though occasionally overly academic, Pavlic provides a fascinating context for placing Baldwin within his own history and time, and a period of cultural explosion in the United States.

In 2014 the University of Michigan released James Baldwin and the Queer Imagination, by Matt Brim ($25.95), which reminds us that Baldwin is the central figure in 20th-century black gay literature. And while Brim acknowledges Baldwin’s important place, he also provides a critique of Baldwin’s use of, and for, a gay community. Lambda Literary Review writes that the “fierce entitlement to self-definition often manifested in Baldwin’s fiction and in his personal life” could present “a disavowal of gay identity and community. In a 1984 interview Baldwin admitted, ‘The word “gay” has always rubbed me the wrong way.’” As you can see, there will be plenty to talk about as our Year of Baldwin progresses.  OH

This month’s Scuppernong Bookshelf was written by Brian Lampkin and Steve Mitchell.

NEW RELEASES FOR FEBRUARY 2017

February 7: Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge, by Erica Armstrong Dunbar. A compelling read recounting a little-known chapter in American history. (Atria/37 Ink. $26)

February 14: Stand Your Ground: A History of America’s Love Affair with Lethal Self-Defense, by Caroline Light. A backward glance at self-defense laws in America. (Beacon Press. $25.95)

February 21: Parable of the Sower, by Octavia Butler. A lovely reissue of what the Denver Post describes as “a powerful story of hope and faith in the midst of urban violence and decay. . . Excellent science fiction and a parable of modern society.” (Seven Stories. $24.)

February 28: I Am Not Your Negro: A Companion Edition to the Documentary Film Directed by Raoul Peck, by James Baldwin. The public and private Baldwin emerge in passages from his books, essays and personal notes. (Vintage International. $15)

Shadow Market

A fanciful dealer in dark wares

By D.G. Martin

When Fred Chappell writes, multitudes of fans stop and read. Now retired, he was for more than 40 years a beloved teacher of writers at UNCG, where he helped establish its much-admired Master of Fine Arts in Writing program. He served as North Carolina poet laureate from 1997 until 2002. He is revered by many for his fiction, especially his early works based on his years growing up in the mountains. But his 30 some-odd books show his determination not to be limited to any genre, geography or time.

His latest book, A Shadow All of Light, demonstrates the wide scope of his imagination and talent. It is a magical, speculative story set in an Italianate country hundreds of years ago. Chappell asks his readers to believe that shadows are something more than the images people cast by interrupting a light source. These shadows are an important, integral part of a person’s being. They can be stolen or given up. When lost, the person is never the same.

In Chappell’s tale, an ambitious young rural man, Falco, comes to a big port city (think Venice), where he attaches himself to a successful shadow merchant, Maestro Astolfo. Over time Falco learns the trade of acquiring and selling shadows detached from their original owners. The business is a “shady” one because the acquisition of human shadows often involves underhanded, even illegal methods, something like today’s markets in exotic animal parts or pilfered art.

But Maestro Astolfo and Falco, notwithstanding public attitudes, strive to conduct their business in a highly moral manner. Although losing one’s shadow could be devastating, the situation is mollified if a similar replacement can be secured from shadow dealers like Astolfo or Falco.

Chappell, in the voice of Falco, explains, “No one likes to lose his shadow. It is not a mortal blow, but it is a wearying trouble. If it is stolen or damaged, a man will seek out a dealer in umbrae supply and the difficulty is got around in the hobbledehoy fashion. The fellow is the same as before, so he fancies, with a new shadow that so closely resembles his true one, no one would take note.

“That is not the case. His new shadow never quite fits him so trimly, so comfortably, so sweetly as did his original. There is a certain discrepancy of contour, a minor raggedness not easy to mark but plainly evident to one versed in the materials. The wearer never completely grows to his new shadow and goes about with it rather as if wearing an older brother’s hand-me-down cloak.

“Another change occurs also, not in the fitting or wearing, but in the character of the person. To lose a shadow is to lose something of oneself. The loss is slight and generally unnoticeable, yet an alert observer might see some diminishing in the confidence of bearing, in the certitude of handclasp, in the authority of tread upon a stone stairway.”

After introducing his readers to the complexities of shadow theft, storage and trade, Chappell takes Falco, Astolfo and their colleague Mutano through a series of encounters with bandits, pirates and a host of other shady characters. Mutano loses his voice to a cat. Bandits challenge Falco’s efforts to collect rare plants that eat human shadows. Pirates led by a beautiful and evil woman battle the port city’s residents for control.

Similar to Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Chappell’s A Shadow All of Light is fast-paced, mythic, and unbelievably entertaining. OH

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

Much Ado(e) About Nothing

Loving reflections on deer and dears

By Maria Johnson

A dear friend and I were supposed to get coffee on the morning of Christmas Eve, a pleasant pause in the holiday madness.

She called at 8:30 that morning.

Could she get a rain check?

She and her husband were having people over for dinner that night. To that end, her mate had put a plastic-wrapped frozen turkey in the refrigerator to thaw several days before.

That morning, my friend had opened the refrigerator to find a thawed turkey, all right — and raw poultry fluids leaking all over the refrigerator. The aforementioned spouse had neglected to put the turkey in a dish or bag to catch the runoff. The result was a mess of Scroogian proportions.

My friend and I bumped our coffee date ahead a couple of days and ended the call.

That’s when the text stream started.

“Did I mention that  [husband’s name redacted] is at the gym right now?” my pal wrote. “Merry  Christmas. Insert hearty laugh here.”

I turned to my husband and described the situation.

“Uh-oh,” he said, a concise expression of brotherly empathy with .

I forwarded the comment to my friend.

“OK,” she replied. “That gave ME a hearty laugh. I sent  a photo of the inside of the fridge without elaboration. Did  [child’s name redacted] take care of the dishwasher last night? Nah. So I can’t even get the damn turkey into the sink. Nay! Do not sink into a foul stew on this merry morn! Isn’t this fun? Virtual coffee.”

“Yeah. For me,” I wrote. “I’d be tempted to leave right about now and let them deal with it. Except I think we both know where that would end — with you all eating in a Chinese restaurant tonight.”

“Oh, I thought about it,” she texted back.

It was clear that she was going to stay and clean up the mess.

“There have to be some extra Baby Jesus Reward Club points in here for you,” I assured her.

Minutes ticked by. Another text landed.

“The muck skirted the vegetable bins below the turkey. It’s on the outside, but not the inside,” she wrote.

“Let’s hear it for no salmonella juice in the veggies,” I texted.

“I think the damage is contained for the moment,” she replied. “I might make some cranberry sauce and cookies. It makes more sense to deal with the bird when it’s time to put it in the oven.”

With a keen sense of story, she joked that she’d just delivered me a column for next December. I filed the idea away. You never know.

“ ’Preciate your flexibility and companionship this morning,” she wrote. “Here’s the thing: One Thanksgiving a few years back, I put all the potato peels down the garbage disposal. When my dad arrived,  had his head under the sink, taking the thing apart. Never said a cross word. So after the cranberry sauce is made, I’ll finish the hazmat project. Grace cuts both ways, right?”

I could have waited until next Christmas to tell this story. But somehow I think it makes a better Valentine’s Day story.

****

Several readers emailed me to comment on last month’s column about Snow White, a young albino deer I saw on the greenway near Lake Brandt in early December.

“I saw an albino doe last February on the Guilford College campus near the lake,” wrote Richard Furnas. “Also felt that magical feeling of mother nature letting me see her beauty even though it’s a bit of a chromosome mixup.”

Phil Newcomb was just glad to know he wasn’t nuts for seeing a white deer.

About two years ago, Phil was driving through his neighborhood when he looked into a clearing for a gas pipeline right-of-way. There was a gleaming white deer standing with a few brown deer.

“It kind of gives you goose bumps,” he said. “It could be the same white deer that you saw or an offspring of it. If it’s the same one you saw, it makes me feel good to know that it’s still out there.”

Kevin Nabors reported seeing an albino deer while driving through Guilford Courthouse National Military Park one night in 2013.

“I saw the albino deer cross in front of me about 40 yards ahead. It took a second to register,” Kevin said. “My first thought was that it was General Greene’s white horse LOL. I slowed, and the deer was in no hurry. It was an amazing sight.”

The reader who seems the most likely to have seen the same deer I saw is Chad Rehder.

Early one morning just before Thanksgiving, Chad, 43, was riding his mountain bike on the Wild Turkey Trail between the greenway and the Lake Brandt marina when he came up fast on a juvenile white deer standing with some brown deer about 50 feet from the trail.

“I was by myself, but I think I said, ‘Wow! Look at that!’ I felt compelled to stop and get my camera out,” he says. “It was so surreal.”

The pale deer didn’t startle. As Chad snapped pics, it moseyed away with the others.

“There is somewhat of a magical characteristic about it because it is so unique,” he says.

Happy Valentine’s Day to all who can hold science and magic in their hearts at the same time.  OH

Maria Johnson can be reached at ohenrymaria@gmail.com