Back in 1977, when I was still young, my father-in-law acquired a beast of a machine -- a big 7-horse Troy Bilt rear-tine tiller that was the envy of this part of Belcher Mountain Road. Well, okay, there weren't any close neighbors then, and few neighbors now, but it was a marvel. It would tear up patches of ground on this old farm pretty fast and turn them into nicely-tilled gardens for more than three decades of garden bounty. There's not a long growing season up here at about 3,000 feet, but it's a mighty productive short season when there's just enough rain and not too much wind.
Thing is, a 38-year-old tiller can be a lot of work just to get ready to have it do all the work. I sent this old boy to the shop last fall for a good worming-out, new plug and new fuel line. Even when it gets good care, it's a chore just to crank, as I relearn each spring. The pull-cord is a good four feet long and requires throwing some body weight with it. When 10 pulls don't do the trick, it's back to the basics. Fuel cock opened? Choke on "on"? Fuel valve opened up just right? Tiller controls on neutral? Sigh. Sometimes, when nothing else works right, you just have to pull the plug, squirt in some WD 40 or some such, and crank it into life, hoping the thing won't blow itself to pieces. Then it's a matter of wrestling the thing down to the garden, through the gate and into position to till a straight line for the potatoes. And this point, I was pretty worn out pulling on the cord, but happy to finally be ready to till.
I was five feet away when the wheel came off. I hope no one could hear me over the roar of the old engine, because the air momentarily turned blue -- what the great editor and professor Jim Shumaker would have described as a flow of molten profanity. Somehow the beast had dropped a bolt on the port side of the tiller and the wheel had simply done what it was bound to do: spun itself off the axle. This resulted in half a morning looking in the grass for the missing bolt (futilely); running back to the barn to find a replacement (four candidates, with nuts, just to make sure I got the right size); back down to the garden to see which of them would fit (one of them), and then another 20 minutes while I figured out how to tighten down a two-inch bolt in a space where there is insufficient space to insert two fingers, let alone one socket wrench and one crescent wrench (more molten incantations.)
At last I got it all together and fired back up and heaved into position to begin tilling. Cranked up the fuel feed, threw it into forward and slow, and held on as it bucked and jumped and bounced side to side whenever it hit a rock of any size. The first pass approximated what artists call an S-curve, but I figured out how to straighten it out -- by throwing myself on top of the tiller, hoping that 180 pounds of old man would help stabilize a beast that still plenty of go and not much whoa.
When I finished, it looked pretty good, but I felt like I had just gone 10 rounds with Strangler Lewis. I retired to the house, found a shady spot on the deck and read the latest Rick Bragg book for a couple of hours in quiet bliss. Those 'taters could wait for another day.
Wednesday, May 6, 2015
Thursday, April 23, 2015
Prize-winning colleagues, every one
Someone said a long time ago it's not enough to be good; you've got to be lucky, too. Dunno about the good part, but I do know that I've been a lucky guy for just about every one of these going-on 69 years. Had good parents, good teachers, good editors, good friends and good times. Had superb bosses along the way -- Irwin Smallwood and John Alexander at the Greensboro Daily News, Ran Coble at the NC Center for Public Policy Research in Raleigh and Ed Williams and Rich Oppel at the Charlotte Observer.
But today I'm writing about the people I worked with and who have been recognized by their collegues as THE best in the business. I'm talking about Maria Henson, who won the Pulitzer Prize for her editorials about battered women when she worked for the Lexington Herald-Leader in Kentrucky. She later joined the editorial staff at the Observer and worked for several years with me in the Observer's Raleigh Bureau. With her energy and drive and insistence on good writing and and her impatience with ineffective government, Maria showed why she won journalism's top prize. She's now Associate Vice President and Senior Editor at Wake Forest University.
And I'm talking about Kevin Siers, the Minnesotan who came south to draw pictures for the Observer's editorial pages a couple of decades ago and won the Pulitzer Prize in 2014 for "thought provoking cartoons drawn with a sharp wit and bold artistic style." Kevin's work was at times hilarious and and times painfully poignant but always with a sharp point. He was also a most collegial co-worker. I never spent more than a week or two in Charlotte at any one time, but always enjoyed wandering into his office to see what he was working on, and to get him to tell me how he was doing. Almost every time it was, "Not too bad." Yep. Pulitzer Prize. Not too bad.
And I'm talking about Washington Post reporter Carol Leonnig, who this week won the Pulitzer Prize for her reporting about wrongdoing and mismanagement in the Secret Service. She was part of a team that won last year's Pulitzer Prize for its reporting on national security issues, and won various other prizes for her investigative reporting, including stories about Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell and his wife that eventually led to their convictions in court. Carol worked in the office next to me in the Observer's Raleigh Bureau, and watching her investigate wrongdoing in state government was like being in a classroom with an excellent teacher. Haven't known many people who could so quickly develop such good sources that produced so many useful stories that fulfilled the newspaper's key job of watching and reporting the truth.
It surprises me not one whit that Maria, Kevin and Carol won the Pulitzer. It does surprise me that many of my other colleagues at the Observer and in Greensboro have not also won the big prize for their labors in uncovering stories that huge institutions such as government and business did not want in print. Their work was excellent and unrelenting and deserving of high honors, and maybe someday they will get them.
I won more than my fair share of prizes and honors in my four decades of journalism, but the closest I came to the big prize was probably the delightful meal served up by my then-Greensboro colleague, Windy March, now in Florida. It was a chicken dish -- appropriately called "The Pullet Surprise." It was a prize-winner, too.
But today I'm writing about the people I worked with and who have been recognized by their collegues as THE best in the business. I'm talking about Maria Henson, who won the Pulitzer Prize for her editorials about battered women when she worked for the Lexington Herald-Leader in Kentrucky. She later joined the editorial staff at the Observer and worked for several years with me in the Observer's Raleigh Bureau. With her energy and drive and insistence on good writing and and her impatience with ineffective government, Maria showed why she won journalism's top prize. She's now Associate Vice President and Senior Editor at Wake Forest University.
And I'm talking about Kevin Siers, the Minnesotan who came south to draw pictures for the Observer's editorial pages a couple of decades ago and won the Pulitzer Prize in 2014 for "thought provoking cartoons drawn with a sharp wit and bold artistic style." Kevin's work was at times hilarious and and times painfully poignant but always with a sharp point. He was also a most collegial co-worker. I never spent more than a week or two in Charlotte at any one time, but always enjoyed wandering into his office to see what he was working on, and to get him to tell me how he was doing. Almost every time it was, "Not too bad." Yep. Pulitzer Prize. Not too bad.
And I'm talking about Washington Post reporter Carol Leonnig, who this week won the Pulitzer Prize for her reporting about wrongdoing and mismanagement in the Secret Service. She was part of a team that won last year's Pulitzer Prize for its reporting on national security issues, and won various other prizes for her investigative reporting, including stories about Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell and his wife that eventually led to their convictions in court. Carol worked in the office next to me in the Observer's Raleigh Bureau, and watching her investigate wrongdoing in state government was like being in a classroom with an excellent teacher. Haven't known many people who could so quickly develop such good sources that produced so many useful stories that fulfilled the newspaper's key job of watching and reporting the truth.
It surprises me not one whit that Maria, Kevin and Carol won the Pulitzer. It does surprise me that many of my other colleagues at the Observer and in Greensboro have not also won the big prize for their labors in uncovering stories that huge institutions such as government and business did not want in print. Their work was excellent and unrelenting and deserving of high honors, and maybe someday they will get them.
I won more than my fair share of prizes and honors in my four decades of journalism, but the closest I came to the big prize was probably the delightful meal served up by my then-Greensboro colleague, Windy March, now in Florida. It was a chicken dish -- appropriately called "The Pullet Surprise." It was a prize-winner, too.
Tuesday, April 14, 2015
The War's End for Great-Grandfather Betts
While looking for something else this morning my hand came on a little book published a good many years ago and reprinted in the 1960s by cousins in Sanford. It was my great-grandfather A.D. Betts' "Experiences of A Confederate Chaplain, 1861-1865," recounting a Methodist minister's treak across the South while serving as chaplain of the 30th North Carolina under Lee and Jackson.
It was 150 years ago last week that he wrote of the end of that awful Civil War, and his story concluded not far from the Greensboro home where my father was born a little more than half a century later (1906) and where old A.D. would spend the last years of his life, dying when my father was 12. I'd always heard him referred to as an impecunious parson, a gentle man kind to those he served, comforting Northern as well as Southern soldiers wounded or dying.
But I've also found bits of his diary disturbing in some ways. Had the troops he supported won the war, it would have prolonged slavery. And as you will see, his final entry suggests that at war's end, he took with him one of those slaves ("a negro servant," as he put it) whom he addressed as "Boy," though it is unclear to me whether he owned this "servant," or was simply taking him along with a horse as a favor to a friend. I never heard any of my family discuss the ownership of slaves, another one of those curious practices often found in Southern families whose collective archives of pictures, writings, odd pieces of furniture and personal belongings give only the vaguest clues as to their participation in the customs of the day. It begs some research.
Here's how he recounted that time in the last entry of his diary, dated April 9, 1865 but evidently covering several days:
April 9 (Sunday) - Heard Brother Willson preach. During this week heard that Lee had surrendered! Sad news. Johnston's Army passed through Chapel Hill. We knew Sherman would soon be in. I did not wish to meet him. I told some of my friends I was going with Gen. Johnston's Army. Rev. Dr. Charles Phillips tenderly told me to go on and my friends would take care of my family. After midnight I kissed my wife and children and mounted a mule and rode away, thinking I might not see them in months or years. I rode all night, crossing Haw river, overtook Johnston's Army and reported to Brig. Gen. Hoke, who assigned me to duty as Chaplain to 17th N. C. Regt. We camped a few miles from Greensboro for two or three days till we heard we were to be surrendered. I rode to Greensboro one day and met Rev. Dr. John B. McFerrin of Nashville, Tenn., at the home of good Mrs. F. M. Bumpass.
The night following the tidings of our contemplated surrender was a still, sad night in our camp. Rev. W. C. Willson, the Chapel Hill pastor, was with us. We had preached a few times in that camp; but that night we made no effort to get the men together. In little, sad groups they softly talked of the past, the present and the future. Old men were there, who would have cheerfully gone on, enduring the hardship of war, and protracted absence from their families, for the freedom of their country. Middle aged men were there, who had been away from wives and children for years, had gone through many battles, had lost much on their farms or stores or factories or professional business; but would that night have been glad to shoulder the gun and march forward for the defense of their "native land". Young men and boys were there, who loved their country and were unspeakably sad at the thought of the failure to secure Southern Independence.
Rev. W. C. Willson and I walked out of the camp and talked and wept together. As I started back to my tent - to my mule and saddle, I should say, for I had no tent - I passed three lads sitting close together,
talking softly and sadly. I paused and listened. One said, "It makes me very sad, to think of our surrendering." Another said, "It hurts me worse than the thought of battle ever did." The third raised his arm, clenched his fist and seemed to grate his teeth as he said, "I would rather know we had to go into battle tomorrow morning." There was patriotism! There may have been in that camp that night generals, colonels and other officers who had been moved by a desire for worldly honor. Owners of slaves and of lands may have hoped for financial benefit from Confederate success. But these boys felt they had a country that ought to be free! I wish I had taken their names. And I wonder if they still live. They are good citizens, I am sure.
Next day I mounted my mule and started to Chapel Hill, intending to surrender there. I took along a negro servant and horse for a friend. At sunset we met an old man at his spring near his house. I politely asked to be permitted to spend the night on his land. He objected. I said, "Boy, take off our saddles and halter our horses." The farmer quickly said, "If you will stay, come up to the house." I slept on his porch.
I had seen many of them dead, wounded, or prisoners. Near Chapel Hill one rode up to my side. The Blue Coat and the Grey chatted softly and sparingly. He kindly offered to show me the way to headquarters. I thanked him and told him I would ride to my house and see my family and report myself later. The town was full of Federals. Each home had a guard detailed by the commanding General. My guard was a faithful, modest fellow. In due time I called at headquarters and was paroled.
It was 150 years ago last week that he wrote of the end of that awful Civil War, and his story concluded not far from the Greensboro home where my father was born a little more than half a century later (1906) and where old A.D. would spend the last years of his life, dying when my father was 12. I'd always heard him referred to as an impecunious parson, a gentle man kind to those he served, comforting Northern as well as Southern soldiers wounded or dying.
But I've also found bits of his diary disturbing in some ways. Had the troops he supported won the war, it would have prolonged slavery. And as you will see, his final entry suggests that at war's end, he took with him one of those slaves ("a negro servant," as he put it) whom he addressed as "Boy," though it is unclear to me whether he owned this "servant," or was simply taking him along with a horse as a favor to a friend. I never heard any of my family discuss the ownership of slaves, another one of those curious practices often found in Southern families whose collective archives of pictures, writings, odd pieces of furniture and personal belongings give only the vaguest clues as to their participation in the customs of the day. It begs some research.
Here's how he recounted that time in the last entry of his diary, dated April 9, 1865 but evidently covering several days:
April 9 (Sunday) - Heard Brother Willson preach. During this week heard that Lee had surrendered! Sad news. Johnston's Army passed through Chapel Hill. We knew Sherman would soon be in. I did not wish to meet him. I told some of my friends I was going with Gen. Johnston's Army. Rev. Dr. Charles Phillips tenderly told me to go on and my friends would take care of my family. After midnight I kissed my wife and children and mounted a mule and rode away, thinking I might not see them in months or years. I rode all night, crossing Haw river, overtook Johnston's Army and reported to Brig. Gen. Hoke, who assigned me to duty as Chaplain to 17th N. C. Regt. We camped a few miles from Greensboro for two or three days till we heard we were to be surrendered. I rode to Greensboro one day and met Rev. Dr. John B. McFerrin of Nashville, Tenn., at the home of good Mrs. F. M. Bumpass.
The night following the tidings of our contemplated surrender was a still, sad night in our camp. Rev. W. C. Willson, the Chapel Hill pastor, was with us. We had preached a few times in that camp; but that night we made no effort to get the men together. In little, sad groups they softly talked of the past, the present and the future. Old men were there, who would have cheerfully gone on, enduring the hardship of war, and protracted absence from their families, for the freedom of their country. Middle aged men were there, who had been away from wives and children for years, had gone through many battles, had lost much on their farms or stores or factories or professional business; but would that night have been glad to shoulder the gun and march forward for the defense of their "native land". Young men and boys were there, who loved their country and were unspeakably sad at the thought of the failure to secure Southern Independence.
Rev. W. C. Willson and I walked out of the camp and talked and wept together. As I started back to my tent - to my mule and saddle, I should say, for I had no tent - I passed three lads sitting close together,
talking softly and sadly. I paused and listened. One said, "It makes me very sad, to think of our surrendering." Another said, "It hurts me worse than the thought of battle ever did." The third raised his arm, clenched his fist and seemed to grate his teeth as he said, "I would rather know we had to go into battle tomorrow morning." There was patriotism! There may have been in that camp that night generals, colonels and other officers who had been moved by a desire for worldly honor. Owners of slaves and of lands may have hoped for financial benefit from Confederate success. But these boys felt they had a country that ought to be free! I wish I had taken their names. And I wonder if they still live. They are good citizens, I am sure.
Next day I mounted my mule and started to Chapel Hill, intending to surrender there. I took along a negro servant and horse for a friend. At sunset we met an old man at his spring near his house. I politely asked to be permitted to spend the night on his land. He objected. I said, "Boy, take off our saddles and halter our horses." The farmer quickly said, "If you will stay, come up to the house." I slept on his porch.
MY FIRST INTERVIEW WITH A FEDERAL SOLDIER ON DUTY.
I had seen many of them dead, wounded, or prisoners. Near Chapel Hill one rode up to my side. The Blue Coat and the Grey chatted softly and sparingly. He kindly offered to show me the way to headquarters. I thanked him and told him I would ride to my house and see my family and report myself later. The town was full of Federals. Each home had a guard detailed by the commanding General. My guard was a faithful, modest fellow. In due time I called at headquarters and was paroled.
Wednesday, April 1, 2015
Music in the hills of Georgia
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| This is how it looked one recent Saturday at John and Jody Bowles' house in Georgia -- before the music storm |
In the 1950s, The Kingston Trio was on top of the music world -- producing more albums each year and selling zillions of records and performing on college campuses and in clubs and auditoriums around the world. "There had been other urban folk revivals, but it was The Kingston Trio that set the wildfire, single-handedly ushering in the really big 'folk boom' of the late 1950s and '60s," wrote William J. Bush in "Greenback Dollar: The Incredible Rise of the Kingston Trio." Their first five albums all became number one sellers, something no other group has ever done. Fourteen of their albums were among the Billboard Top 10 at one time or another, Bush added. Nobody came close in popularity, until the Beatles (who reportedly were big Kingston Trio fans themselves) and Rolling Stones transformed popular music once again. But the Kingston Trio still has a strong following, and the current Kingston Trio performs on the road 30 weeks a year, usually selling out, I'm told. They remain popular because it's good music, they appear to still be having fun and they're accessible to their fans.
If you are into music, chances are you have seen a lot of Martin Guitars and Deering banjos and other pricey instruments. You could buy a pretty nice mini-mansion on lakefront property for the money tied up in the collection of Martins in the Bowles home that day. The Martin guitar is the standard for performers and serious students of guitar, and John Bowles owns Martins dating back to the late 19th century. Others have had their Martins rebuilt, including one four-string tenor guitar that its owner, Bruce Blasej, had rebuilt into an eight-string tenor guitar for a fuller sound when played way up the keyboard. I got in on this deal when my friend of a half-century and more, Wood Allen of Charlotte, got us invited down to Alpharetta to join in. Wood's going as a camper to the fantasy camp this summer and I'm tagging along to take notes and pictures and maybe play a little guitar on the side. My instrument of choice is a 1959 Kay upright bass, but it's hard to pack that baby into an overhead baggage compartment, so my little Blueridge (yep, one word. Sigh.) tenor guitar -- a dead-on knockoff of the beautiful Martin tenor guitar played in Georgia by Rob Reider -- will make the trip with me.
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| That's Wood Allen, left, guitarist Tony Lay, center, and Stan Sheckman, right, on the bass guitar |
(If that video won't work for you, Wood Allen suggests trying this link:)
Bob Shane is a revered and legendary figure in American folk music, but his work transcended the field. Early on he was known as the "Hawaiian Elvis Presley." After Shane recorded his hit "Scotch and Soda," Frank Sinatra turned down the opportunity to cover it because, it has been written, no one could do it better than Shane already had. Shane not only survives, but as the owner of the Kingston Trio band, he's still performing on occasion with the current K3s (George Grove, Bill Zorn and Rick Dougherty), and overseeing the production of new albums (Wood and I have a song that will be on a new disc) and the Kingston Trio Fantasy Camp in Scottsdale, AZ. What was fun about this weekend is that his grown children also came by the Bowles' house and brought their grandchildren, so in one weekend we played for three generations of Shanes. Pretty cool.
A very long time ago, Wood Allen and I and Fred Birdsong and later Jim Garrison thought we'd hit it big in folk music. We thought we might be the next Kingston Trio. We didn't and we weren't. But thanks to a lot of nice folks who have kept the Kingston Trio flame alive and burning brightly, we've had a chance to know them, work with them in the studio and -- on occasions like the mini-camp in Alpharetta, play for the one of the originals. As a Minnesota friend of mine likes to say, Not too bad.
Tuesday, March 10, 2015
Mud Season in the Meadows
One of these days I'm going to figure out that my carefully-laid plans to tackle a number of outdoor projects over the winter on those occasional mild days ain't gonna work out. For one thing, there ain't many mild days up here at 3,186 feet on the last ridge between the Eastern Continental Divide and the Blue Ridge Escarpment.
And when there are those few mild days -- forecasts above 40 degrees and winds of less than 15 mph -- the fact is they don't warm up enough to melt snow until afternoon, and they start getting colder again an hour later. They are short work days, those winter afternoons, even here in the final weeks of winter.
So on the rare occasions when the mercury rises a bit and the sun peeks out a bit and the winds diminish a bit, there's a fevered race to get ahead start on spring chores., Thus in the past week we've pretty much worn ourselves out trying to get the blueberries pruned, the brushpile burned, the 6 trailer loads of leaves hauled that had piled up on the south side of the house, the old shed next to the asparagus patch cleaned out, that twisted pile of rusted metal roofing hauled to the county dump transfer station, the tire changed on the older of the two farm carts and the potholes in the gravel driveway filled with stone. Got most of it done, but those potholes will have to wait for a drier day.
No wonder I feel every one of my 157 years. The calendar says I'm merely 68 years and eight months old, but my knees, calves, back and hands tell me they aren't going to work like that anymore, and besides, the machinery is way out of warranty.
Not a problem. Forecast is for a week of rain, and not much point in dreaming up anything else that needs attention. Besides, the Nationals and the Orioles are in spring training camp down the coast a ways, and I expect they'll be needing my services before too very much longer. I always like to be available this time of year when the phone starts ringing, and anxious managers inquire how fast I can get down yonder, you know. Play ball!
And when there are those few mild days -- forecasts above 40 degrees and winds of less than 15 mph -- the fact is they don't warm up enough to melt snow until afternoon, and they start getting colder again an hour later. They are short work days, those winter afternoons, even here in the final weeks of winter.
So on the rare occasions when the mercury rises a bit and the sun peeks out a bit and the winds diminish a bit, there's a fevered race to get ahead start on spring chores., Thus in the past week we've pretty much worn ourselves out trying to get the blueberries pruned, the brushpile burned, the 6 trailer loads of leaves hauled that had piled up on the south side of the house, the old shed next to the asparagus patch cleaned out, that twisted pile of rusted metal roofing hauled to the county dump transfer station, the tire changed on the older of the two farm carts and the potholes in the gravel driveway filled with stone. Got most of it done, but those potholes will have to wait for a drier day.
No wonder I feel every one of my 157 years. The calendar says I'm merely 68 years and eight months old, but my knees, calves, back and hands tell me they aren't going to work like that anymore, and besides, the machinery is way out of warranty.
Not a problem. Forecast is for a week of rain, and not much point in dreaming up anything else that needs attention. Besides, the Nationals and the Orioles are in spring training camp down the coast a ways, and I expect they'll be needing my services before too very much longer. I always like to be available this time of year when the phone starts ringing, and anxious managers inquire how fast I can get down yonder, you know. Play ball!
Friday, February 27, 2015
Mamie Betts's 139th birthday today
There'll be a small party tonight at our place to celebrate my grandmother's 139th birthday. Probably just two of us there, part of a dwindling few who remember that remarkable woman when she was in her prime at, oh, 80 or 85. She was always ready to jump in the car and go somewhere. Or deal another game of cards, her green eyeshade pulled low and her eyes darting around the table. Or ready to pick up a squalling grandchild or great grandchild and balance him or her on her ample lap and tell another of her stories about life back in the day.
She was born a decade after the end of the Civil War, grew up in Raleigh when it was just a small dusty town, still smarting from Sherman's visit but still mostly intact. She attended Peace Institute, just a few blocks on the other side of the Governor's Mansion, met an aspiring young dentist named Joe Betts, moved to Greensboro shortly after the turn of the century and lived to be 103 before going to her reward in 1979. She had most of her marbles up until she was 102.
To celebrate the end of her 14th decade, we'll have a nip or two of bourbon, her toddy of choice after she rejoined the Presbyterian Church after the death of my teetotaling Methodist grandfather in the mid-1950s. Her second son Henry would bring her a jug every month or so and put it near the front leg of her writing desk, close to hand in case she wanted a little nip. Her first son was my Dad, John Monie Betts. Her daughter was a beauty named Margaret, but of course we knew her as Peggy. When those three kids got together with their mom, the laughter would fill the room.
She was a force field in Greensboro in the first half of the century. Along with two other women whose last names also began with a B ("the Three Bees," as they were called locally) she founded the Greensboro Historical Museum in 1924. She and Joe Betts were into technology, in a way. They had one of the first residential telephones in Greensboro in their front hall, and my Dad once told me he never forgot their phone number. What was it? I asked. "Seven," he said. They also had a radio that could be tuned to stations named in gold paint on the dial: Tokyo. Berlin. Paris. London. Chicago. New York. And they subscribed and kept every copy of National Geographic, providing their grandchildren with pictures from around the world that would reappear in elementary school projects at Irving Park and Aycock schools in the 1940s and 50s.
Mamie Betts, as friends called her (To my older sister and me, she was simply "Gran"), was a formidable presence who bore a striking resemblance to a certain presidential spouse. The family story goes that a stranger once inquired, "Beg your pardon, but aren't you Eleanor Roosevelt?" To which she replied, "I most certainly am not," and strode away in a huff.
In her early days in Greensboro as a young bride and mother, she struck up a fast friendship with Annie Cooke, whose husband (and in time, children and grandchildren as well) was a prominent lawyer in town. Many years later after their husbands died, my grandmother moved in with Annie Cooke and they spent years holding court in Annie's handsome brick home near the golf course. They were known to most folks as Aunt Annie and Aunt Mamie. Their upstairs den was a popular gathering place, especially for Annie's sons, graduates of Davidson College, during the 1960s when the Wildcats had nationally prominent basketball teams. Through some quirk of the atmosphere, the TV in Annie's den could often pick up televised games from Charlotte stations, and a crowd of Davidson alumni, most of them but not all of them lawyers, would watch the games while Annie and Mamie poured lemonade and dealt cards at the table in the corner.
My lasting memory of these two old friends came with their attachment to taking Sunday afternoon drives. For a long time, their driver was a quiet, dignified black man named Leroy -- not Leeroy, Aunt Annie was quick to point out to those who did not know the distinction, but leROY -- who would tuck the two old friends into the back seat of Annie's car and then hop in front to drive them for a long turn around Greensboro. Leroy was not in great health in his later years, and he lost a leg to complications from diabetes. My Dad worked for a surgical supply company and had Annie's car fitted with a mechanism that made it possible to drive the car with one leg. Thus when they went for a drive, it was the two old ladies who helped Leroy out to the car and into the front seat, and then Annie and Mamie would let themselves into the back and off they would go, gliding around town for the afternoon. Years later, when I saw the movie "Driving Miss Daisy," there were scenes when I felt like I had seen this flick before.
Gran saved my bacon once from almost certain permanent grounding. My parents were out of town one week in the mid-1960s, and Mamie was staying with my sister and me to make sure we didn't get into trouble. I was working construction that summer, and had an early start to the day. I had left a stove burner on after fixing coffee and rushing off to the other side of town. The red-hot burner first melted some of the plastic wall tiles my Dad and I had years earlier applied to the wall behind the stove. Some of the melted plastic ignited and, before the stench woke my sister and my grandmother, the resulting fire spread an oily black goo all over the kitchen. When I got home that evening, Gran offered me a deal: "If you can get this cleaned up and fixed before your mother and father get home, I'll never tell them about it." So it was that I spent the next 48 hours scrubbing off goo, chiseling away burned and deformed tiles, finding replacements and more mastic, and getting the kitchen back in reasonable order before the parents got back. The kitchen smelled faintly of burnt toast and turpentine for months after that, but no one said a word, and I was allowed to live.
So this evening I will raise a cup or two of Kentucky's finest to Mary Atkinson Monie "Aunt Mamie" Betts. Happy Birthday, Gran, and thanks.
She was born a decade after the end of the Civil War, grew up in Raleigh when it was just a small dusty town, still smarting from Sherman's visit but still mostly intact. She attended Peace Institute, just a few blocks on the other side of the Governor's Mansion, met an aspiring young dentist named Joe Betts, moved to Greensboro shortly after the turn of the century and lived to be 103 before going to her reward in 1979. She had most of her marbles up until she was 102.
To celebrate the end of her 14th decade, we'll have a nip or two of bourbon, her toddy of choice after she rejoined the Presbyterian Church after the death of my teetotaling Methodist grandfather in the mid-1950s. Her second son Henry would bring her a jug every month or so and put it near the front leg of her writing desk, close to hand in case she wanted a little nip. Her first son was my Dad, John Monie Betts. Her daughter was a beauty named Margaret, but of course we knew her as Peggy. When those three kids got together with their mom, the laughter would fill the room.
She was a force field in Greensboro in the first half of the century. Along with two other women whose last names also began with a B ("the Three Bees," as they were called locally) she founded the Greensboro Historical Museum in 1924. She and Joe Betts were into technology, in a way. They had one of the first residential telephones in Greensboro in their front hall, and my Dad once told me he never forgot their phone number. What was it? I asked. "Seven," he said. They also had a radio that could be tuned to stations named in gold paint on the dial: Tokyo. Berlin. Paris. London. Chicago. New York. And they subscribed and kept every copy of National Geographic, providing their grandchildren with pictures from around the world that would reappear in elementary school projects at Irving Park and Aycock schools in the 1940s and 50s.
Mamie Betts, as friends called her (To my older sister and me, she was simply "Gran"), was a formidable presence who bore a striking resemblance to a certain presidential spouse. The family story goes that a stranger once inquired, "Beg your pardon, but aren't you Eleanor Roosevelt?" To which she replied, "I most certainly am not," and strode away in a huff.
In her early days in Greensboro as a young bride and mother, she struck up a fast friendship with Annie Cooke, whose husband (and in time, children and grandchildren as well) was a prominent lawyer in town. Many years later after their husbands died, my grandmother moved in with Annie Cooke and they spent years holding court in Annie's handsome brick home near the golf course. They were known to most folks as Aunt Annie and Aunt Mamie. Their upstairs den was a popular gathering place, especially for Annie's sons, graduates of Davidson College, during the 1960s when the Wildcats had nationally prominent basketball teams. Through some quirk of the atmosphere, the TV in Annie's den could often pick up televised games from Charlotte stations, and a crowd of Davidson alumni, most of them but not all of them lawyers, would watch the games while Annie and Mamie poured lemonade and dealt cards at the table in the corner.
My lasting memory of these two old friends came with their attachment to taking Sunday afternoon drives. For a long time, their driver was a quiet, dignified black man named Leroy -- not Leeroy, Aunt Annie was quick to point out to those who did not know the distinction, but leROY -- who would tuck the two old friends into the back seat of Annie's car and then hop in front to drive them for a long turn around Greensboro. Leroy was not in great health in his later years, and he lost a leg to complications from diabetes. My Dad worked for a surgical supply company and had Annie's car fitted with a mechanism that made it possible to drive the car with one leg. Thus when they went for a drive, it was the two old ladies who helped Leroy out to the car and into the front seat, and then Annie and Mamie would let themselves into the back and off they would go, gliding around town for the afternoon. Years later, when I saw the movie "Driving Miss Daisy," there were scenes when I felt like I had seen this flick before.
Gran saved my bacon once from almost certain permanent grounding. My parents were out of town one week in the mid-1960s, and Mamie was staying with my sister and me to make sure we didn't get into trouble. I was working construction that summer, and had an early start to the day. I had left a stove burner on after fixing coffee and rushing off to the other side of town. The red-hot burner first melted some of the plastic wall tiles my Dad and I had years earlier applied to the wall behind the stove. Some of the melted plastic ignited and, before the stench woke my sister and my grandmother, the resulting fire spread an oily black goo all over the kitchen. When I got home that evening, Gran offered me a deal: "If you can get this cleaned up and fixed before your mother and father get home, I'll never tell them about it." So it was that I spent the next 48 hours scrubbing off goo, chiseling away burned and deformed tiles, finding replacements and more mastic, and getting the kitchen back in reasonable order before the parents got back. The kitchen smelled faintly of burnt toast and turpentine for months after that, but no one said a word, and I was allowed to live.
So this evening I will raise a cup or two of Kentucky's finest to Mary Atkinson Monie "Aunt Mamie" Betts. Happy Birthday, Gran, and thanks.
Sunday, February 15, 2015
Sweet dreams of the Bahamas in the dead of winter
So, it's about 15 degrees outside here in the Blue Ridge, about 1 degree early this morning, and the weather folks tell us it's going to snow maybe 8 to 12 inches tomorrow. Gonna go up to 15 or 16 tomorrow. First chance this week to be above freezing is Saturday, when the forecast is for 34.
All right. I asked for this. Like it, in fact, most of the time. But we got a nice break this winter, what with a family wedding in Hawaii in January and an invitation from boating friends who live just a couple or three ridges to our west in Dugspur VA, but who keep a boat down near the N.C. coast in Whortonsville (the Whortonsville Tractor and Yacht Club, in fact) and who move down the Intracoastal in November each year, spend about three months in the gentle climes of the Bahamas, and head north again in March.
We flew into Marsh Harbor on Greater Aboco Island a couple weeks ago and for the second time in our lives (and second time within two weeks) put on T-shirts and shorts and sandals in the dead o' winter and enjoyed temperatures that average something like 40 to 60 degrees warmer than what we usually see outside our windows up here in what is sometimes called the Blew Ridge. Loved every minute of it.
Don't get me wrong. I like cold weather. I like being able to see 500 feet into the leaf-free woods, to be able to follow the logging trails that the Woods and the Conners carved into these hillsides in the late 19th and much of the 20th centuries, like being able to hike down to the stone foundation ruins of an unknown pioneer family on the North Prong of the North Fork of the Smith River maybe 800 feet from our front porch, and contemplate what it must have taken to carve out a small homestead in a gorgeous but challenging countryside.
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| Hopetown Harbor on Elbow Key, with the red-striped lighthouse in the background |
But we weren't thinking about hardship and fighting the elements too much the other evening in Hopetown Harbor on Elbow Cay (always pronounced key, the guidebooks tell us) at 6 p.m under the first glimmerings of a full moon. There's a tradition of Tuesday evenings (or was it Monday?) when boaters bring their inflatable dinghies over to the northerly side of the harbor as the conch horns begin to celebrate the setting of the sun. Everyone ties on to everyone else, begins passing around snacks and uncork whatever it is they are wetting whistles with that evening, and the weekly Dinghy Drift begins. As the sun sinks below the horizon beyond the Elbow Cay Lighthouse, the Drift moves slowly across the harbor, passing sportsfishermen and Gold Plate sailing vessels and trawlers and battered scows and lovely motor vessels, and every now and then someone cranks up an outboard to move a raft of maybe 15 dingies carrying maybe 35 congenial folks a couple feet out of the way of somebody's hull. It is a most civil gathering.
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| Old salts Martha B. and her pal before heading up the ways for Man-O'-War Cay |
In the following days we cruise the waters of the Abaco Sea, putting into anchorages at Man-O'-War Cay, Orchid Bay, around the terrible ship-killer Whale Cay, briefly on Green Turtle Cay for wonderful conch fritters for lunch and then on to the pristine Manjack (pronouced Munjack, we are told) Cay, where we meet folks who have carved out their own paradise on an island that has no facilities or utilities other than what they have been able to fashion from their own hard work and ingenuity. Amazing what a big bank of solar panels and, oh, 15 or 20 years of backbreaking labor can produce.
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| At anchor and looking west from Manjack Cay. |
There were some moments of sheer hilarity -- dinghying back from a calm Atlantic-side beach into a 30 mph-wind that had waves breaking into our dinghy as Theresa Palmer (one of the Caribbean's finest boat cooks) was pumping water back overboard and Capt. Brian Palmer was getting lashed with bullets of salt spray. I am happy to say he took it like a man and a Scot. But I repeat myself. The admirable Ship's Dog Martini was taking it all in with her generally calm demeanor -- and an expectation of a hefty dinner once aboard the Motor Vessel Intermission.
As I sit and write, in a frigid landscape in need of some gentle Out Island breezes, I do believe I'd go back to that Bahamas storm anchorage in a, what, Manjack Minute?
And, as sailors of my acquaintance say, Splice the Main Brace.*
*From Wikipedia: "Splice the mainbrace" is an order given aboard naval vessels to issue the crew with a drink. Originally an order for one of the most difficult emergency repair jobs aboard a sailing ship, it became a euphemism for authorized celebratory drinking afterward, and then the name of an order to grant the crew an extra ration of rum or grog."
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