May 2013 O.Henry

285 SHORE LANE - LEXINGTON - $2,900,000One-of-a-kind custom log home on the peninsula of High Rock Lake,with breathtaking views. The 30-ft ceilings, open foyer, greatroom anddining area. 3-5 car garage, two piers and double boathouse. Mainlevel master, large custom kitchen with large eating areas.

Frances Giaimo 336-362-2605 www.PruYostandLittle.com/668943

8121 RIESLING DRIVE - KERNERSVILLE - $2,849,000Stunning one-off gated estate is a collection of magnificently appoint-ed rooms. Every possible amenity from an epicurean kitchen, fabuloushome theater & full bar, to a grand master suite with an equally grandspa bath. 3.72 acrea, garages for 5 cars; state-of-the-art security system.

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8 SAILVIEW COVE - $1,593,000A one-of-a-kind property in Northern Shores Estates. Premium locationwith expansive water views, custom-built with all the amenities youwould expect & then some, great storage in addition to the living areas.Great layout with 6 bedrooms, 6 full and 2 half baths.

Elm St. Office 336-272-0151 www.PruYostandLittle.com/643156

1101 SUNSET DRIVE - $1,590,000Beautiful home overlooking Greensboro Country Club golf course in OldIrving Park. 5 bedrooms, 5 full & 2 half baths. Two gas log fireplaces —great room & keeping room. Master bedroom on main level withadjoining large bath with whirlpool tub & oversized shower.

Eddie Yost 336-210-8762 www.PruYostandLittle.com/614975

812 NORTHERN SHORES POINT - $1,349,000Exceptional Tuscan Renaissance home located in Northern Shores, LakeJeanette gated community. Lake view; elevator. 7-bedroom home withgourmet kitchen, master on main level plus guest room, bonus/theaterarea on upper level plus finished basement with indoor heated pool.

Frances Giaimo 336-362-2605 www.PruYostandLittle.com/658470

8 CLUBVIEW COURT - $1,200,000Stunning home features dramatic 2-story den with handsome fire-place & stately windows overlooking terrace & golf course. Fabulouskitchen with Viking & Wolf appliances; first floor master suite with spabath; keeping room, breakfast room, formal living & dining rooms.


1005 COUNTRY CLUB DRIVE - $1,150,000Fabulous home in the heart of Old Irving Park. Lots of space for familyand friends. 5 bedrooms, 5.5 baths. Master on main level. Manyrenovations. Sunroom, gameroom, theater room. Beautifully landscapedgrounds with stunning terrace for entertaining. A must see.

Barbara Wales 336-314-0141 www.PruYostandLittle.com/666926

21 LOCH RIDGE DRIVE - $1,095,000Magnificent estate home on a beautiful Provincetown cul de sac,graced with 6 fireplaces, a grand dining room, paneled library, theaterwith full bar, gourmet kitchen, a grand master suite with glamorousbath. This home also enjoys a full basement with a gym & sauna.


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4 O.Henry May 2013 The Art & Soul of Greensboro

M A G A Z I N E

volume 3, no. 5“I have a fancy that every city has a voice.”

336.617.0090227A North Spring Street,

Greensboro, NC 27401www.ohenrymag.com

Jim Dodson, [email protected]

andie Stuart rose, Creative [email protected]

David C. Bailey, Senior Editor336.617.0090 • [email protected]

Cassie Butler, Photographer/Graphic Designerkira Schoenfelder, Graphic DesignerLauren Shumaker, Graphic Designer

CONTRIBUTING EDITORSHarry Blair, maria Johnson, Jim Schlosser

CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERSSam froelich, Stacey van Berkel

CONTRIBUTORSJane Borden, kathryn Stripling Byer,

tom Bryant, Quinn Dalton, Sara king, mary James Lawrence, meridith martens,

mary novitsky, Lee Pace, Lee rogers, Deborah Salomon, noah Salt,

Stephen e. Smith, astrid Stellanova

O.HDavid woronoff, Publisher

ADVERTISING SALESmarty Hefner, Sales & Circulation Director

336.707.6893, [email protected] aderholdt, 336.601.1188

amy grove, 336.456.0827

ADVERTISING GRAPHIC DESIGN910.693.2508, [email protected]

©Copyright 2013. Reproduction in whole or inpart without written permission is prohibited.

O.Henry Magazine is published by The Pilot LLC

Capture each story, each laugh, every moment

Today is about Henry and Sarah and a cozy winter day. His funny stories, her laughter, their Saturday morning.

At Hospice and Palliative Care of Greensboro, our focus is on living. Our care is about enabling you to live more fully, with comfort from pain, relief from symptoms and choices on how to live. So the most important thing about your day becomes laughing with Sarah.

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Capture each story, each laugh, every moment

Today is about Henry and Sarah and a cozy winter day. His funny stories, her laughter, their Saturday morning.

At Hospice and Palliative Care of Greensboro, our focus is on living. Our care is about enabling you to live more fully, with comfort from pain, relief from symptoms and choices on how to live. So the most important thing about your day becomes laughing with Sarah.

Together we’ll discover how to capture life’s most important moments.

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May2013

Cover PhotograPh by StaCey van berkel

PhotograPh thiS Page by CaSSie butler

departments

9 Hometown

By Jim Dodson

12 SHort StorieS

Your guide to the good life

15 tHe CitY muSe

By Jim Dodson

17 Life’S funnY

By maria Johnson

Features

51 FirstpresbyterianPoetry By Kathryn Stripling Byer

52 theGardenFiction by Quinn Dalton

56 aFewminuteswithChipCalloway By Noah Salt Our garden guru spins his favorite Spring garden tales

58 GreatamericanBeautiesBy Jim Schlosser The kit home, a true American innovation, once flourished in Greensboro

64 OnefortheagesBy Deborah Salomon Inside the Junior League of Greensboro’s 2013 Designer Home

74 theaccidentalFloristBy Lee Rogers At The Farmer’s Wife, the flowers speak for themselves

79 mayalmanacBy Noah Salt Wicked little thoughts, the perfect May plant and a gentle plea for chaos

19 artiSt at work By maria Johnson

25 tHe omnivorouS reaDer By Stephen e. Smith

28 fooD for tHougHt By David C. Bailey

33 Street LeveL By Jim Schlosser

39 o.HenrY traveLer By Lee Pace

43 tHe SPorting Life By tom Bryant

47 Life of Jane By Jane Borden 82 Arts Calendar

99 GreenScene 111 tHe aCCiDentaL aStroLoger By astrid Stellanova

112 o.HenrY enDing By Harry Blair

Art for Eyes | Eye for ArtsFine Eyewear, Artwork and Jewelry

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Art for Eyes | Eye for ArtsFine Eyewear, Artwork and Jewelry

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The Art & Soul of Greensboro May 2013 O.Henry 9

HomeTown

theHousethatBuiltme

by Jim DoDSon

purelyonaspringlarkthe other day, or simple folly, I Google-viewed my old house and garden in Maine and briefly lived to regret it.

As the cold, all-seeing satellite eye zoomed in the only house I ever built, there sat my classic white post-and-beam saltbox house high on its densely forested coastal hill, still surrounded by 500 unspoiled acres of dense hemlock and birch, with the old town road etching uphill through the woods from the end of the paved town road.

It was suddenly all there, seen from miles above the Earth, and eerily un-changed: my beautiful barn and faux-English two-acre garden surrounded by the stone walls I spent years rebuilding and the slowly greening forest where my children grew up convinced a pair of bumbling but good-natured bears named Pete and Charlie kept watch over our peaceable hilltop woodland. My prim white fences were still prim white and even the ornate bird feeders I put up in the wildflower meadow I created above the bog at the back of the proper-ty were still there, everything unchanged from the day I handed over the keys to the new owners and said goodbye to the place I thought I’d never leave.

That was four years ago this May. I’ve never been back to see it — to be blunt, couldn’t bear to. But I’ve probably had at least a hundred dreams about that house and its garden, haunted by them in the best and worst sort of way.

From ancient times May has always been regarded as the month of flower-ing rebirth, though springtime traditionally arrives in northern New England with a quickness that can both startle and delight. One day it’s sleeting and gray, dreary as can be, and the next the daffodils are jumping up and the sun is warm and the saucer magnolias are opening like ballet dancers in the open-ing act of Swan Lake.

If you are lucky, barring the odd Mother’s Day snowstorm, true spring in the North Country might last two indulgent weeks before the temperature zooms to 80 and summer is off at a brisk gallop for the next four months. Blink your disbelieving eye and it’s Memorial day with the summer hordes flooding into Maine with half of everything they own lashed to the roof of their cars, the official start of Luggage Rack Season, whereupon the price of your basic lobster shore dinner triples overnight.

The May we moved into the house on the hill — the House that built me, as I now regard it — just about everything in my life was new that wet and slow-

coming spring of 1989. I’d been married four years and had a new baby daugh-ter named for her great grandmothers, a new job with two national magazines, and a host of powerful new feelings about what it meant to put down serious roots and build my first home, a place I would quite literally create with my own sweat, blood and tears — and not a few hundred mistakes that taught me much about the spiritual investment involved in true homemaking. In almost every respect, this was my dream home, the place I meant to stay forever.

“All of life is a rhythm of coming and going from home,” notes spiritual writer Thomas Moore, “to the world, and back. Out in the world, we long to return home; sitting at home, we dream about wandering the world. Some make wandering the style of their lives, while others stay at home and imagine the world. Both ways are of infinite value, and both make life worth living.”

Probably because I’d traveled much of the world yet enjoyed the luxury of growing up in a fine and loving home with gardening parents, I knew both yearnings powerfully, though that spring the desire to finally have a place all my own was nearly at fever pitch.

Building your own house — making a home you claim as your own— can either be the most inspiring thing you ever undertake or an ongoing night-mare of ceaseless complications.

In our case it turned out to be a little of both, though incredibly educational and even amusing at certain intervals.

To step back a bit, the previous March we decided to pass on buying and restoring the handsome old farm house in town we were then renting on the banks of the mighty Androscoggin River in favor of building a post-and-beam house that would recall Colonial New England yet incorporate the modern features of life.

To that end, I ran an ad in the local newspaper seeking 10 acres and received several phone calls within days from local folks who had land to sell.

The one that grabbed my attention was out in the most rural western edge of the county, a parcel at the end of the paved road. A laconic Maine woman named Peggy showed me the land — five acres in a wet area at the base of a large forested hill, then agreed to let me wander up the hill to have a look at the land there. I waded through knee-deep snow and eventually came to a beautiful clearing where a couple of cars from the Eisenhower era sat in the strengthening March sunlight, surrounded by white birch and budding beech and hemlock trees.

I knew the instant I saw it this was home.I made an offer on 12 acres. She replied, “I don’t know. That’s where my


HomeTownsecond husband used to work on his cars. It’s kind of sentimental to me.”

She agreed to think about it. The phone was ringing as I came into our kitchen 20 minutes later. “If you’re still interested in buying that land on the hill,” Peggy said. “I would consider selling it to you.”

Thus began my life as a house.Even before the snow was out the next spring we had the cars hauled

off and started clearing. I learned that my new land had really been an old farmstead a hundred years ago, even found remnants of the original stone walls and various rusted tools buried in the earth. As my friend Mark on his bulldozer started carving out the house site — which I determined as to gain the longest benefit of the southern sun — I began rebuilding those walls and planning a garden — imagining a landscape reminiscent of the great sporting estates in England where I’d spent a great deal of my working life. With a little luck and sweat equity, I’d create my own English woodland garden.

Another friend named Todd owned a small company called Maine Housewrights that specialized in post-and-beam construction, the traditional style of Colonial New England. That May, despite a biblical deluge of spring rain that turned our dirt road to impassable muck, we got going on the struc-ture, a 2800-square-foot open-concept salt box with me serving as apprentice worker. By the end of May the structure was basically up and a metal roof on, shutting out the weather.

Since we hoped to be in by late June, I got right to work building cabinets and bookcases, a skill I inherited from a grandfather who was a professional cabinet maker. I also laid the 12-inch pine plank floors Todd found in a New Hampshire barn and put up the Sheetrock walls, discovering I had no aptitude for the latter. The wiring and plumbing were done by a pair of local crews and the kitchen appliances arrived more or less on time, just as we started digging the well.

Oh, the well. The first crew drilled a 75-foot well and announced we had

“plenty of water,” which seemed true for the first day or so. Then the well went dry. Our well guy came back and admitted he was stumped. We had only 1/16th of a gallon flow per minute. “We’ll have to frack,” he said, and brought back an even larger rig. He even brought back a douser, a true New England tradition, an old fella who used a witch hazel stick to find the best drilling spot. The rig hammered loudly for two solid days and we finally hit water, a geyser, in fact — and a bill that boggled. “We can give genuine Maine well water for Christmas,” I theorized the unexpected triple-cost to my wife.

Because our lease on the farmhouse expired in April, I should point out, we were living in a large recreational camper — two adults, two golden retriev-ers, two young barn cats and a four-month-old infant.

Yeah, it was kind of a kick in a rednecky reality TV show sort of way. At one point I brought home a huge roll of Astroturf to put down under the camper’s canopy in an effort to keep the mud at a distance. With our gas grill and folding chairs from Target, we looked like a couple of suburban escapees trying to get back to the land. The UPS guy, at least, was impressed. “Man, this is what I call a vacation spot,” he gushed.

Then black fly season hit. If you’ve never been bitten by a black fly, you have no idea what I’m talking about. To get the effect, uncap a medium-point fountain pen and stab yourself in the upper arm with it. Then multiply that by a factor of ten, and there you have black fly season in northern New England.

We moved into the house, as I recall, around my wife’s birthday in early July. That Christmas, when my folks came up from North Carolina for the holidays, my mom looked at the rustic interior of the house — all open, beauti-fully exposed hemlock beams and oversized windows drenched with sunlight — and remarked, “This is lovely, sweetie. When are you planning to finish it?”

“This is finished, Mom,” I pointed out. “It’s supposed to look like this.”“Oh, lovely,” she said. “How Nice.”Over the next fifteen-plus years, I built that place into something special,

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HomeTownor it built me — a huge new sun porch in back, an expanded side porch, a new architectural roof, and the piece de resistance: a handsome three-car barn with a finished upstairs for my office.

A second child came within the first year of occupation and the years unfolded — glorious painted autumns, deep snows, sudden springs. I expanded my gardens every year, got to know a family of garter snakes that lived in our stone walls. The house, meanwhile, underwent constant revision. The children grew up, their heights marked on the laundry room door frame with the fidelity of an annual house inspection.

In truth, I probably lavished far too much time and money creating that English garden in the woods, getting more hooked on the mistress of gardening with every passing year, which included a fantastic blue garden of hostas that came alive ev-ery June, a rose pergola full of climbing roses and daylilies imported from North Carolina, a gigantic “Southern” garden and perennial bed in back, and a philosopher’s garden which overlooked it all. That was was where, typically, I sat for lengthy spells on late summer afternoons on a peeling blue bench after mowing my little woodland estate — nicknamed “Slightly Off in the Woods” by my amused Scottish mother-in-law — admiring the home and garden I’d made, imagining how I would live there forever.

Forever doesn’t last, of course. That’s the mes-sage of life in this world. “To live in this world,” advises the poet Mary Oliver, “you must do three things: to love what is mortal, to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when time comes, to let it go.”

At their spiritual cores, a home and garden are innately mortal things, subject to rust and decay and the other laws of an ever-changing universe. The time to say goodbye came, as I say, almost five years ago, and as surprisingly as a sudden Yankee spring, when we sold our house and came home to North Carolina for good.

Though I miss Maine and my house and garden on the forested hill terribly at times, it’s not a decision I regret in any way. Nothing is ever lost if it is truly loved.

Best of all, lately my house dreams have begun to fade, a sign that perhaps my subconscious mind and soul are finally letting go of “Slightly Off in the Woods,” making room for something new, the way you would say goodbye to a departed friend.

I now find myself passing meadows outside of town and feel a familiar stirring to take on another dream home, or drive through the old neighbor-hoods of Greensboro I know so well and see a charming house for sale and suddenly think: I could live there in a heartbeat.

And someday, somewhere, I will. OH

Contact editor Jim Dodson at [email protected]

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HellodolleySo what if Greensboro can’t claim Dolley Madison’s birthplace? We’ve

got her dress, and it’s back on display in Draped in Legend: A Velvet Dress, a Carriage Trunk and a First Lady at the Greensboro Historical Museum through June 16.

The exhibit highlight is a red velvet dress that the museum is so protective of it has only loaned it twice to other museums. Dolley and her husband, James, occupied the White House during that war — until the British set the place on fi re. According to legend, Dolley pulled down the White House’s red velvet curtains during the British advance and made a dress from them.

Dolley Madison was born in 1768 in a cabin near the present-day Guilford College campus. She lived in the area for only a year. That was long enough for what would become Guilford County in 1771 to claim her.

Several of Dolley’s garment worn in the White House are on display. Also featured is a trunk in which Dolley is said to have packed garments as she hurried out of the White House. Info: (336) 373-2043 or www.greensborohistory.org. — JS

summerpreludeHello May. We’�ve waited all winter to inhale your fragrance of fresh-cut

grass and fl owers in bloom. You are summer�’s perfect prelude. Your arrival brings us something else: festivals.el Dia de los niños/ el Dia de los Libros (Children�s Day/Book Day) Saturday, May 4, 12:30–5 p.m. Festival Park, 200 North Davie Street, Greensboro Free While the festival is geared toward children, the performances will delight adults. Highlights include food vendors, salsa dancing and the Winston-Salem-based Latin jazz band West End Mambo. Info: (336) 373-3636 or www.greensborolibrary.org.

Cinco de mayo festival, a Day of Hispanic music artists Sunday, May 12, 11 a.m. until 7 p.m.White Oak Ampitheatre, 1921 West Lee Street, GreensboroFree.

Sponsored by radio stations La Raza 98.3 and Pepe 790 AM along with the publication Hola Noticias, this event celebrates a May 5 battle and draws 15,000 Hispanics statewide. It features authentic Latin food, cultural dance performances, a Kid Zone with Dora the Explorer, soccer games and internation-ally acclaimed Latino bands. Info: cincodemayotriad.com

27th annual Carolina Blues festivalSaturday, May 18; 1 p.m.–11 p.m. Festival Park, 200 North Davie Street, Greensboro. Tickets: $20 in advance, $30 on the day of show. Festival headliners this year are fi ve-time 2013 Blues Music Award Nominee Janiva Magness and Louisiana Hall of Famer Kenny Neal. The lineup also includes Mac Arnold, Armand & Bluesology with Will McFarlane, Toot and the Longshots! and “Sunnyland Steve” Burchfi eld. Info: (336) 333-2605 or www.piedmontblues.org.

glenfest 2013 Saturday, May 18, noon until 6 p.m. The intersection of Glenwood Avenue and Grove Street, Greensboro. Free This is the fi fth multicultural festival, sponsored by the Greater Glenwood Neighborhood Association. Activities include crafts for kids, face paint-ing and a multicultural dress-up area. African and Latin musicians will perform, and food vendors will sell Korean, Creole, American and fusion fare. Info: ggnanc.com.

WineandChocolate

If your mom’s like my mom, she loves chocolate. So why not take her on Mother’s Day to the truffl e-and-wine tasting at Guilford County’s Grove Winery, and she just might decide all those labor pains were worth it? The rich chocolate truffl es, one of them featuring Grove’s own cabernet, are handmade by Greensboro pastry chef Jules Watson. And if you drop by Grove on the 11th, you can catch a session by Burlington’s Big Something, winner of last year’s Last Band Standing contest. Alternatively, take Mom — or anyone else who likes both wine and rivers — to Grove’s annual paddle party on May 19, which starts at Brooks Bridge, about a thousand yards from the winery. Info: (336) 584-4060 or www.grovewinery.com — DCB


Short Stories

sauceofthemonthYou can now buy Ms. Mary’s Famous Chow Chow in Roseville,

California, but it’s still made in McLeansville on the Gann Farm. That’s right down the road from the headquarters of The Fresh Market, which carries Ms. Mary Gann’s chow chow in all of its stores. I can’t tell you how good squash relish is on California tofu, but Ms. Mary’s mixture of squash, onions, bell peppers and pimentos — kicked up a notch with turmeric and red pepper — is outrageously good on pinto beans. “It’s an old family recipe, just like the pickled beets, the watermelon rind pickles and the chow chow,” says Rodney Gann, a third-generation chow chow maker. His mom, the eponymous Ms. Mary Gann, runs the chow chow operation and the farm. Try the squash relish on shrimp and grits, he says, which, for me, sure beats tofu. Available exclusively at The Fresh Market: www.freshmarketstores.com. — DCB

HistoryonparadeHow Piety Hill became College Hill is a story about one of Greensboro’s best-preserved and old-

est neighborhoods. “Greensboro’s premier 19th century neighborhood” is how Benjamin Briggs, Preservation Greensboro’s director likes to describe the area that stretches from Greensboro College

to what is now UNCG.Preservation Greensboro invites the public to

see ten of its most historic structures for themselves May 18 and 19, including the Wafco Mills apartment complex. Seven structures date to the 19th century, among them the Walker-Scarborough House. It was built in 1845 for Letitia Morehead, daughter of for-mer Governor John Motley Morehead, who lived in nearby Blandwood Mansion and is sometimes called the father of modern North Carolina.

Also featured is the Troy-Bumpass House, now a bed and breakfast, which dates to 1845 when the

new neighborhood was called Piety Hill. That’s because so many Methodists lived there within walk-ing distance of Methodist-afi lliated Greensboro College.

The tour will run from 11 a.m to 5 p.m. on May 18 and from 1–5 p.m. on May 19. Tickets are $15 for Preservation Greensboro members, $25 for the public ($20 if bought in advance). Info: (336) 272-5003 or www.blandwood.org. — JS

seeingthesaviorTwenty or thirty times, California religious artist Wayne Forte has depicted Christ’s descent

from the cross.Forte’s Deposition, referring to the dethroning of a king, is representative of the vivid and varied

works of art in a traveling exhibit, Seeing the Savior: Images from the Life of Christ — up from May 20 through June 30 at Greensboro’s First Baptist Church.

Forte joins a long line of artists, including Rembrandt, who have been inspired by the story of Jesus’ followers removing his body after crucifi xion.

“It’s a very poignant moment because they are taking down their Lord and Savior. You have every op-portunity to capture their grief, and their shock and their joy,” Forte says.

The Bible says Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathaea removed Christ’s body, but Forte and other artists have taken the liberty to include others. He has a reason, too, for using a fuchsia background and red striped wounds on Christ’s body: “Supposedly the sun turned red during that time, so that’s why I used really hot colors,” Forte says.

“This is just another way for us to celebrate all the gifts that are given and expand the ways we see and hear the good news,” says Monica Hix, chair of the church’s visual arts team.

Visitors should use the church’s covered entrance at 1000 West Friendly Avenue and follow the hallway to the gallery wall. Info: (336) 274-3286. —MJ

Bach-to-Bach

Think of it as Sitkovetsy squared. Violin virtuoso Alexander Sitkovetsky, in his fi rst appear-ance with the Greensboro Symphony, will team up with

his cousin, music director Dmitry Sitkovetsky, for what’s often called the “Bach Double.” One of the best examples of the late Baroque period, the fugal character of the Double Concerto for Two Violins will weave its way into your heart as the two violinists dance in opposition to one another on May 9 at 7:30 in War Memorial Auditorium and then at 8 p.m. on May 11 in Dana Auditorium on the Guilford College cam-pus. It’s the second time the cousins have played the double concerto together — and yet another pairing of the Sitkovetsky family of musicians. Dmitry’s mother, pianist Bella Davidovich, has played with the GSO several times, and Dmitry’s daughter, Julia, and his wife, Susan, have both sung on the GSO stage. Cousin Alexander will also play a Mendelssohn Violin Concerto. The fi nale will be Beethoven’s “10th” Symphony, an amalgamation of movements from his eighth, sixth, third and fourth symphonies. Tickets: (336) 335-5456, extension 224, Coliseum Box Offi ce, 1921 West Lee Street, Greensboro or www.greensborocoliseum.com. — DCB


■ Divorce/Separation ■ Child Custody/Support

■ Adoptions ■ Veterans Disability


by Jim DoDSon

Bynature, being a child of Febru-ary, The Muse has al-ways had a fondness for the cold and the winter landscape. But this year may have shifted the equation. To put it po-litely, Old Man Winter overstayed his welcome and early spring came outrageously late this year, which may explain why we showed up on a recent morning at Tanger Family Bi-centennial Garden at opening time just as a timid April sun emerged from days of low clouds and cold rain.

The saucer magnolias, cheerfully in bloom by the parking main gate, were a hopeful sign, but river birches and crape myrtles leading into the garden proper were scarcely showing buds and looked, in fact, almost like shivering land sculptures reaching fingers to the heavens.

On the other hand, is there anything more beautiful than a magnificent garden on the cusp between winter and spring, on the threshold of erupting into the radiant bloom of new life?

We honestly doubt it. Along the footpaths, as milky morning sunlight filtered through the

bare-limbed canopy, the grass was already an iridescent green and clusters of brave daffodils shone their golden trumpets against the morning chill. The pansy beds were in their glory, purple and dewy, and several young cherry trees along the meandering creek were showing signs of imminent eruption.

Green shoots were everywhere — jonquils, iris, late hyacinth, early tulips, and more daffodils leading the charge into spring.

Our destination was just over the Tanger Family footbridge to the beauti-fully groomed perennial beds in the vicinity of Jano Farkas’ spectacular sculpture The Student, who appropriately posed with a somewhat indignant air about him, left hand and hat planted impertinently on hip and a youth-ful mug visibly unamused by springtime’s slow rising curtain.

In the spirit of full disclosure, The Muse should point out that his mom had a hand in planting shrubs and spring bulbs in these woodland beds many years ago, even before the 7.5-acre garden — first created in 1976 in observance of the nation’s Bicentennial — became the legacy of Stanley and

Doris Tanger in 2006. Much of what you see on a stroll through the park — from its generous benches to strategic plantings to its ever-changing seasonal displays — is the vision and handiwork of several Greensboro garden clubs.

Our mom’s thing was peonies and tulips, so an annual morning walk in the spring to see them in bloom is now an accepted rite of spring, though this morning the tulips and peonies were still many weeks away.

Still, the inscription at The Student’s feet, a quote from Saint-Exupéry, seemed to offer

a worthy message for the season: “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

True enough. But words matter, too. In a moss-covered mailbox tucked artfully beneath the final buttery blooms of a mature hillside camellia, a trio of small spiral notebooks were brimming with handwritten personal messages to the spirits of the garden. The wandering Muse opened an orange notebook and read a couple of pages. “Do all you do with love,” someone named C.K. had written in elegant script, “and your life will flourish.” And, “I wish Jeff good health and joy and a new job soon with all my heart . . . Mom.”

All gardens are acts of friendship and love — “Dig in the soil, delve in the soil,” read a small sign in our mom’s own beloved peony beds — so it seemed only fitting to bump into Harrison and Katy Evatt and their dog, Bailey, show-ing the garden to their friends from Shelburne, Nova Scotia, Alan and Jan Pulfrey, whom they met on a Caribbean cruise. The Muse was only too happy to offer his limited expertise at taking a phone photo of the five garden walkers, whereupon a friendly conversation about Greensboro in the spring ensued.

“Is there a more beautiful place in town at this moment?” asked Katy. “Hopefully we’ve finally turned the corner into spring!”

This thought seemed suddenly quite infectious, perhaps a sign of rapidly spreading spring fever, for the morning sun strengthened, and the park was suddenly filling up with visitors of every stripe, size and age: Elderly couples walking hand in hand, power walkers catching their late morning fitness hikes, new moms with toddlers in tow, taking their first tentative steps into a new season.

A group of teenage girls knelt to scribble their own messages in the note-books on the hill, and a young man and his girlfriend had spread a blanket on the grass as the Muse headed across the grassy meadow toward his car. As he began to play his guitar and the girl lay back and turned her face lazily to the warming sun, the Muse noticed his pants cuffs were positively drenched with dew, a true and lasting sign of spring’s arrival. OH

morningWalk,WetCuffssecretmessagesinaGarden

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by maria JohnSon

Youknowthesaying, “You’re only as young as you feel”?

I think that’s true because most days I feel and act as if I’m about 4. I walk around blurting out questions, and pulling my doggies’ tails, and spill-ing food on my clothes, and forgetting to brush my hair, and falling asleep in the middle of movies longer than ninety minutes, etc.

Most of the time, it works out.But there are times when I am reminded that I am, in fact, a middle-aged

mom. The most recent time was when I went shopping for a birthday pres-ent for my younger son, who just turned 16.

That meant he wanted a better sound system for the wagon-style car he’ll inherit. I love this car, but I admit the acoustics needed help. Imagine for a moment that you wedged a family of elves in the third row — a very real pos-sibility if you had access to elves — and made them drink beer and sing into the empty cans. That was the sound quality.

My son said a subwoofer would cure the problem. And that is how I found myself in a car stereo store.

The first thing you should know about a car stereo store is that it’s populated almost entirely by young dudes with tattoos and earrings and droopy pants. They talk in hushed tones, saying things like, “I’m gonna set you up, man.”

Right away, I noticed that I was standing out and not for good reasons. So I did what any self-respecting middle-age woman would do: I made a pathetic attempt to be cool.

I walked up to a dude in a painter’s cap and said, “I’d like to get an esti-mate for putting the car in a sub for my son.”

Yes, I did. My spirit was floating above my body, and I could hear the words coming out of my mouth, but I was powerless to stop them.

Then I came back into my body — because it was not time for me to go into the bluish xenon headlights that they also sell there — and I tried the words again. This time, they came out right.

Then, still trying to be cool and knowing, I said in a hushed voice, “My son wants a 10.”

Honestly, I had no idea what a 10 was. Could’ve been 10 pounds, or 10 horsepower, or 10 tablespoons. I had no idea.

The guy said, “I don’t have any 10s left. All I have is a 12.”I think you see the problem. Was a bigger number better — like with a tax

refund? Or worse — like with a jail sentence?

So I said, “How much do you want for the 12?”And he said, “Same price.”I was in too deep. I chewed my lip and said, “That’s a pretty good price

for a 12. Let’s do it.”I was cracking under the strain of cool. I wanted out. And then, in

walked my salvation: a 20-something dude with a backward hat and a gun in a holster. Mmm hmm. A real live gun. Because of his hat and his firearm, I called him Caps. In my mind.

Now, normally a guy like Caps would scare the hell out of me. But I was not scared at all. Why? Because he was accompanied by his mother. He took her to the inner sanctum of the store, a den illuminated by glowing dials and screens. Back in my day, we called them radios.

They came out of the den with a box. Mrs. Caps paid for it, and they waited while the object was installed. I sensed that Mrs. Caps was a kindred spirit, so I mommed over to her.

“Excuse me,” I said. “What did you just buy?”And she said, “A CD player.”And I said, “Does it have an iPhone jack?”And she got that mom-in-the-xenon-headlights look and pointed to her

son and said, “Ask him.”Caps was so nice. He walked me back to the inner sanctum and gave me a

dissertation on electronica. It seems the latest thing is called a double-DIN head unit — a touch screen that controls your radio, discs, GPS, iPhone or iPod.

I think that’s right. I understood about every fifth word.They called my name and said my car was finished. I thanked Caps and

went out to the car and turned the key and produced a seismic event.The car windows shook. My ears hurt.“Owwwwww!” said my 4-year-old self.“What the hell?” said my middle-aged self.I turned the volume down, found a station playing ’70s funk and gently

boomed my way down Wendover Avenue.Later, I handed the keys to my son.“They didn’t have a 10. So we got you a 12,” I said.He lit up.“Save your money if you want a double-DIN. I guess you know what that is.”He smiled and rolled his pretty eyes.And my middle-aged self skipped away laughing. In my 4-year-old mind. OH

Maria Johnson is not sure what it means, but she loves saying the word “subwoofer.”

mom,unplugged

It’s easy to be cool when you have no idea what you’re talking about

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Artist at Work

By Maria Johnson

Say you’re an old Scottish fishing rod box — the kind of slim, wooden box that anglers once used to stow their fishing rods when they traveled.

Say you were nabbed by a British antiques picker.Then say the picker sold you to The Wind

Rose in Greensboro.There, you’d be reborn. An artisan

might enhance your original wood finish. A woodworker might make you a stand, and another craftsman might paint the stand, all of which would turn you into a sofa table and a whopper of a conversation piece.

That’s the kind of thing that happens at The Wind Rose, a Greensboro business that special-izes in importing and custom-finishing casual English and French antiques.

The company is headquartered in a biscuit-colored building at one of the city’s most visible intersections — Battleground Avenue and Hill Street — and yet is better known outside Greensboro than inside.

That’s because the business traditionally has dealt with interior decora-tors who have sauntered through its showroom twice a year at the furniture-centric High Point Market. That explains how Wind Rose antiques have landed in Palm Beach, Manhattan, Scottsdale and other posh spots.

But then the Great Recession hit, housing sales mired and decorators’ business dried up. So in recent years, The Wind Rose has opened its doors to walk-ins who want to browse the headquarter’s small showrooms filled

with ready-to-buy items; meander through the chilly warehouse to pick their own antiques and custom finishes; or come in to discuss giving their granny’s sideboard a new look.

Novices beware: You might be overwhelmed by the choices.

“We can do anything here,” says Carolyn Duncan, sales manager and 20-year veteran at The Wind Rose. “We can take a chest and do it 500 ways.”

Another caveat: If you’re shopping for high-end European antiques, keep moving.

“We do some fancy things, but generally speaking we have cottage-emotional antiques,” Duncan says. “Our stuff is soulful.”

That’s largely owing to the company’s founders, Ned White and Carey

The Wind and the RoseThe remarkable antiques and restoration shop that grew from the passion

and creativity of its late, well-loved owners

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Wright, both of whom died in the last year — the 69-year-old White during a heart procedure and the 78-year-old Wright of kidney failure.

“It’s been a tough year,” allows Duncan, who considered White her best friend next to her husband. She keeps a picture of White and his dog Minnie, one of two beloved King Charles spaniels, taped to a lamp on her desk. She talks to the picture, telling White she hopes he approves of how she, the staff of a dozen and the new owners — Wright’s nephew, Jay Brower, and Wright’s brother, Richard, who works in the shop — are handling the business that started in 1984.

“This was a little accidental company that was never meant to be a busi-ness,” Duncan says.

It started as a passion. Wright, a Greensboro native, had retired from the apparel industry and was living in Morehead City when he started import-ing English and French antiques to sell in a rented space at the beach. He and his life partner, White, also from Greensboro, loved to travel to Europe, where they haunted fairs and antique shops.

“I would say that what got The Wind Rose started was their love of going to Europe,” says staff artist Rebecca Northuis.

A couple of years into Wright’s antique venture, White left the furniture industry to join him in running The Wind Rose. They named the business for a sunburst graphic, often seen on old maps, representing the world’s eight major winds.

White and Wright bought what they liked: furniture, accessories and all kinds of boxes — fi shing rod boxes, hat boxes, Bible boxes, document boxes, inlaid boxes, tea caddies. They turned over their fi nds to artisans to be restored or fi nished in interesting ways.

Wright, with his apparel background, was adept at predicting furniture trends that fl owed from fashion. White, who’d worked as a furniture designer for many years (he once won the prestigious Daphne Design Award) had a knack for seeing the potential in pieces that some people might write off as junk.

“If Ned saw it run over and lying in the street, he’d say, ‘We can fi x it,’” Duncan says.

The company’s first base was an old warehouse connected to the former Tijuana Fats restaurant at McGee Street and Federal Place in downtown Greensboro.

“It was the most scary, depressing place,” Duncan says, laughing at the memory of the warehouse. She and the staff were thrilled to move to the current location in 1999. Perched on a hill catty-corner from a Mexican restaurant — apparently British and French antiques are attracted to rice and beans — the former heating-and-air-conditioning offi ce has been made over with paint and plantation shutters.

“When we moved over here, we said, ‘Oh my God, we have hot water and windows,’” Duncan says. “It was exciting.”

The turn of this century, with its strong housing sales, was good to The Wind Rose, and their success caught the eye of larger companies.

“I can remember one time at market, Pottery Barn sent seven people to our showroom,” says Duncan. “They walked in our showroom, and they had tape measures, pencils and papers. I think Ned or Carey fi nally asked them to leave.”

The business rode a wave of demand for painted furniture. It also carved out a niche for custom-built furniture. White designed the pieces and hired English furniture makers to build them from reclaimed wood.

The Wind Rose still takes orders for custom-made furniture, but now the company subcontracts that work to Greensboro area craftsmen, who send the pieces back to The Wind Rose to be hand-painted and fi nished.

Duncan cites a Palm Beach designer who saw an antique table and ordered a similar one, sized to fi t her customer’s loggia. The Wind Rose is working on it.

The Hill Street building houses many operations in its 15,000 square feet: the offi ce; a studio where artists embellish pieces with faux effects and other details; a couple of small showrooms; a cavernous warehouse; and a back shop where pieces are stained, painted, varnished and glazed, all by hand.

The Wind Rose artisans don’t use spray paint, and they shy away from stripping furniture and starting over.

Artist at Work


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“You lose so much character that way,” says Northuis, the artist. She points to an inlaid wooden box a little bigger than a cigar box. The original fi nish was spruced up, and the inside of the lid was inscribed with the name of an attorney who is retiring from a fi rm that gives personalized boxes as gifts.

A stroll through The Wind Rose warehouse and showrooms underlines the creative nature of the company’s work.

There are grape hods — metal baskets that vineyard workers once used to harvest grapes — embellished with family crests and ready to be stuffed with dried arrangements and hung on a wall.

A tin hat box, painted and perched on a stand, is ready for a new life as an end table.

A birdcage, gutted of its fl oor, painted and rigged with a light bulb, shines as a distinctive chandelier.

A bedside stand makes you reach out and touch the faux-painted fl uting on front, just to see if the grooves are real.

A weathered iron grill becomes a small table with the addition of a metal stand and a glass top.

A round, marble-topped end table with gilt legs awaits rebirth as a bath-room vanity. The homeowner, who lives in Chapel Hill, wants the piece to have longer legs and a hole in the marble before it gets a vessel sink on top.

A tall haberdasher’s chest with narrow, glass-front drawers — did they once hold shirts? Ties? — waits for someone to decide what it will be next.

“Possibilities are what this place is all about,” says Duncan.You can see more of The Wind Rose’s work at thewindrose.net OH

Maria Johnson is a contributing editor of O.Henry magazine. She can be reached at [email protected].

Artist at Work



By stephen e. sMith

The December 26, 2004, Indian Ocean tsunami killed an estimated 230,000 people in twelve countries, making it the deadliest tsunami in recorded his-tory. In human terms, the enor-mous number of casualties inflicted by the wave is incomprehensible, but for each singular statistic there’s a personal story of sorrow. Sonali Dera-niyagala’s Wave: A Memoir of Life After the Tsunami is an unsparing account of one survivor — a wife, daugh-ter and mother — who has endured unimaginable loss.

Deraniyagala teaches now in the department of economics at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London and is a visiting research scholar at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, but on the morning of the tsunami, she and her husband, Steve, their two young sons, Vikram and Malli, and her parents were staying at a hotel in Yala, a national park on the southeastern coast of Sri Lanka. Deraniyagala was standing in a doorway chatting with a friend when she noticed a wave edging up the gentle slope to the hotel. She called to her husband, “Come out, Steve, I want to show you something.”

The sea continued to rise with startling rapidity, and Deraniyagala and her husband and children fled their room, leaving her parents behind in the hotel. “I didn’t shout to warn them. I didn’t bang on their door and call them out.” The family climbed into a Jeep that was already moving and

made it to the end of the driveway, where the vehicle filled with churning water. Deraniyagala and her husband lifted the children so their faces would be above the surge, but the Jeep flipped over, and in a split second, she was swept away. The five people she loved most in the world per-ished in the tsunami, but Deraniyagala managed to grab a low-hanging branch and survive. What lay before her, the initial shock and the unrelent-ing, overwhelming sorrow, is her story to tell — and she tells it with brutal honesty.

Following the disaster, Deraniyagala somehow made her way to her aunt’s home in Colombo. “The front door of the house was open, neighbors and relatives wandered in. They were told about me. Everyone looked at me aghast. She’s lost her children? And her husband and her parents? Some of the visitors left quickly and returned with more people saying, look at this poor lady, isn’t it unbelievable, her whole family is gone. I was slumped in that brown armchair. Is this me they are talking about?”

Readers are likely to experience a similar reaction to Deraniyagala’s story. The loss she suffered is so overwhelming that it’s difficult to grasp. Merely reading her descriptions — rendered in disquieting detail — makes her anguish palpable. How could anyone suffer such pain and carry on? readers will ask.

Deraniyagala’s experience is not analogous to the stages of grief that pop psychology would have us believe is the norm — sadness, loneliness, anger, anxiety, fatigue and pain. Her initial reaction to the loss of her family was physical in nature: “I stabbed myself with a butter knife. I lashed at my arms and my thighs. I smashed my head on the sharp corner of the wooden headboard of the bed. I stubbed out cigarettes on my hands. I didn’t smoke, I only burned them into my skin.” She was intent on killing herself, but a devoted group of friends and family kept guard over her constantly.

For months following the tsunami, Deraniyagala couldn’t leave her room. She was terrified of everything. “I couldn’t look at grass because I didn’t

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want anything to remind me of our life, remind me of them. I wanted to guard myself against any kind of memory.” Every object in the physical world, no matter how mundane, summoned up moments spent with her lost family. She recalled with frightening clarity her children’s every habit, her husband’s words and gestures haunted her, she imagined her parents living still in the empty house where she grew up. And she was racked with survivor’s syndrome because she mourned some family members more than others. She drank heavily and abused prescription drugs and passed through a phase where she directed her anger at the Dutch family who had rented her parents’ home. She banged on their locked gate, constantly called on the phone and hung up, parked her car in front of the house at night and leaned on the horn.

Deraniyagala’s acute psychological reaction to the tragedy is interwoven with the history of her relationship with her husband, parents and chil-dren. She revisits family outings, listens to the music they loved, eats at restaurants they once frequented — all of which intensify the reader’s understanding of her torment. “I remember the four of us driving home to North London on our last Sunday in England. We’d been to Fortnum & Mason to buy a Christmas pudding for my mother. Steve wanted to show the boys the new offi ces his research institute was moving to . . . . It was raining, and I was in a hurry to get home. ‘Do it when we’re back in January,’ I said.”

So what is the worth of such a memoir? Will it assuage the anguish of those poor souls who are, God forbid, similarly burdened by fate? Probably not. Will readers who have experi-enced comparable loss fi nd solace in the story of Deraniyagala’s painful struggle toward recov-ery? Again, it’s unlikely.

The value of Deraniyagala’s memoir is in what it doesn’t say directly — that grief, even in its mild-est manifestations, is unavoidable, and there’s no easy or convenient path to healing. One’s personal history never goes away, and there’s no such thing as “closure.” “But I have learned that I can only recover myself when I keep them near,” Deraniyagala writes. “If I distance myself from them, and their absence, I am fractured. I am left feeling I’ve blundered into a stranger’s life.”

Perhaps the best we can do is become accus-tomed to the truth. Who among us can go on living without arriving at a degree of reconcilia-tion with those we’ve loved and lost? And after all, this life of averages spares no one. OH

Stephen Smith’s most recent book of poetry is A Short Report on the Fire at Woolworths. He can be reached at [email protected].

Reader

We’re not a mexican restaurant, we’re a taco joint

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Greensboro | 336.294.4610thebistroatadamsfarm.com



Food for Thought

By DaviD C. Bailey

Like a little meteor on the tip of a fondue fork, a flaming marshmallow writes a blue and yellow trail from the hibachi to Mary James Lawrence’s lips. “Pfffftt,” she goes just before it looks like her lipstick is going to ignite. “It’s so much fun to play with fire.”

This is the finale of a dinner lit by torches and starlight, featuring flames from start to finish. And for this summer camp veteran, one of the rites of spring is eating al fresco and then topping off the meal with s’mores. But don’t expect pedestrian graham crackers and ho-hum Hershey bars from Mary James. “Use Biscoffs,” she says, “the little airline cookie that’s just about the hottest thing going right now.” Seek out fancy designer choco-late bars, she says, “and get several kinds so everyone can do his or her own thing.” The tiny hibachis — just right for two to share — come from a local international market and are fueled by a fire gel paste from the Extra Ingredient. Here we go: Biscoff on the bottom. Then a square of chocolate comes next, then crown it with a stackable marshmallow meteor so the chocolate melts before being “Pfffftted” out.

Although she says the rest of the meal could have been prepared ahead of time, it’s more flavorful because she fixed it an hour before we arrived. “You want to be outside on the patio enjoying your guests,” she says. “Let’s kick off springtime; it took forever to get here!” she says, hoisting a thoroughly chilled glass of French rosé. “You know rosé and al fresco go hand in hand,” she tells us, “and this Triennes rosé from Sue and Penny at Zeto’s is really good. Where am I? Provence? Or North Carolina?”

For our pasta course, we’re having Rustichella d’Abruzzo Fusilli col Buco! “For heaven’s sake, don’t get Mueller’s. If you’re going to all the effort to cook and enter-tain, buy quality ingredients,” she says. Mary James grabs a twisty, hollow noodle and thrusts it into a guest’s face: “If you look at it and feel it,” she says — and how could you not — “it is rough and has a texture to it. That noodle will grab the sauce because it is an artisanal pasta and was extruded with a bronze die.”

It’s fine to cook the pasta ahead of time, she says, just be sure to top it with garlic from a press while it’s still hot, then drizzle onto it what looks like way

too much olive oil. Just before serving, toss the pasta with chopped red and green bell peppers, green onions, green and Kalamata olives and fresh herbs along with a combination of grated Parmigiano-Reggiano and crumbled feta. “Get the block variety,” she says. “The crumbles are too salty.”

“As you’re chopping up your veggies, get the guys to go out and light the fire,” she says. “And you must have some torches.” As though you

don’t have enough fire to play with already.For the main course, make sure you use jumbo shrimp — fresh-caught from

the Carolinas if at all possible — and marinate them for no more than an hour in garlic, lemon juice, olive oil and oregano, with just a hint of red pepper.

Here’s where the grill guys may need some supervision. “Watch them like a hawk,” she says. “If the shrimp start to shrink, you’ve already overcooked them.”

Fire may be fun, but with shrimp you need fire control.

Carrot & Ginger Soup1 tablespoon olive oil1 cup minced shallots1 tablespoon minced fresh ginger1 slice lemon2 pounds organic carrots, coarsely chopped2 cups vegetable stock1 cup carrot juiceSalt and freshly ground white pepperSour cream (garnish)Chives (garnish)

In a 3-quart saucepan, heat olive oil. Add shallots, ginger and lemon slice. Saute until shallots are translucent. Add carrots and 1/4 cup water. Cover and cook until carrots are tender, about 10 minutes. Remove cover and add vegetable stock and carrot juice. Bring to a simmer and cook 20–30 minutes. Cool to room temperature.

Transfer to blender and puree. Can be served cold or hot. Garnish with sour cream and chives.

Note: Organic carrots are important, not only for their lack of pesticides, but they have a sweeter, better flavor, and they don’t taste like the produce department of the grocery store.

Starlight and S’moresMary James Lawrence’s perfect al fresco picnic

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Mediterranean Pasta Salad1 12–16-ounce package fusilli col buco (preferably,

Rustichella D’abruzzo)3/4 cup olive oil3 cloves garlic, minced1 tablespoon dried oregano 1 tablespoon dried basil Salt and freshly ground black pepper 1 cup red bell pepper, small dice1/2 cup green bell peppers, small dice3/4 cup sliced green onions with tops3/4 cup green olives, chopped3/4 cup Kalamata olives, chopped1/4 cup chopped fresh basil1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley6–8 ounces feta cheese1/2 cup freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add pasta and cook until al dente. Drain, rinse with hot water and drain again. Transfer to large bowl and add olive oil, garlic, dried oregano, dried basil, salt and pepper while the pasta is still warm. Toss.

Just before serving, chop vegetables and add them along with the fresh herbs. Toss. Add cheeses. Transfer to large shallow bowl and serve at room temperature with grilled shrimp.

Food for Thought“I frankly don’t see beer going with any of this,” Mary James Lawrence says as she swirls

her Triennes vins de Provence in her glass and looks at me as if I’d suggested she start serv-ing toasted Wonder Bread graced with margarine. “I can’t imagine drinking anything but wine with this meal, and it’s time to bring out the rosé.”

But The Hophead thinks there’s a distinct possibility that some of his ale-loving buddies might not agree. To get a second opinion on Mary James’ recommendation, I asked some members of my professional beer-support group what they thought might go with her al fresco menu, starting with her carrot-and-ginger soup. “Triangle Brewing IPA ought to do the trick,” says Todd Fisher, the beer guy at 1618 Wine Lounge. “The fantastic piney, citrusy fi nish from this India Pale Ale against the warming sensation from the ginger will leave you with a fantastic umami mouthfeel.”

Chris Blackburn, the beer-loving chef at Josephine’s, suggests a classic American ale with the Mediterranean pasta salad and shrimp skewers — Foothill’s Pilot Mountain Pale Ale, for instance, with its clean, bright fi nish and cascade hops. Or a wheat beer with coriander notes to go with the shrimp.

More challenging is just what to serve with s’mores. I turned to Jay Pierce, who as execu-tive chef of Lucky 32 Southern Kitchen has been deftly pairing brews with desserts at his monthly beer dinners. At fi rst blush, he suggested Duck Rabbit Milk Stout from Farmville. “It’s low in alcohol and minimally hopped so your palate can appreciate the subtle interplay between s’mores’ ingredients,” he says, warming to the topic.

Better yet, he says, might be Working Man’s Lunch from Fullsteam Brewery in Durham. “Since it’s brewed with Escazu chocolate and not overly hopped, it would marry well with the nuttiness of the graham crackers, the faint smokiness of the charred marshmallows and the luxurious richness of the chocolate,” Pierce says, licking his lips. And as if anyone needed a more convincing argument, he adds, “This brew was inspired by the traditional food pair-ing of RC Cola and MoonPies.” Something they don’t do in Provence.

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Grilled Shrimp With Lemon And Garlic3 tablespoons minced garlic3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice1/2 cup olive oil2 tablespoons dried oregano1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes1/2 teaspoon saltFreshly ground black pepper2 pounds jumbo shrimp, peeled and deveined

Combine all ingredients. Marinate shrimp for one hour. Meanwhile, prepare charcoal grill or preheat gas grill. Remove shrimp from marinade. Thread skewers, going through the tip and tail. This keeps them from spinning when turning. Cook 2–3 minutes per side. This totally depends on the size of the shrimp and the temperature of the fire. If they start to shrink, you have overcooked them!

Note: Fresh shrimp are preferable, but if you must buy frozen, make sure they are a product of U.S.A.

Variation: This marinade works well for chicken tenders also.

Inside Outside Hibachi S’moresUsing the individual hibachi grills from Pu Pu platters of days gone by,

and a new set of ingredients, s’mores are reinvented.1 package Biscoff cookies1 package Kraft Jet-Puffed StackerMallow marshmallowsA variety of specialty chocolate bars (for instance, chocolate with salt and

caramel, chocolate with orange, chocolate with coffee)

Individual cast-iron Poo-Poo hibachi grill

Gel fuel (ethanol based)The gel fuel is available at local

kitchen stores. If the bottles are not available, buy the small containers and transfer gel to hibachi.

Do I really need to tell you how to make a s’more?! OH

David C. Bailey is senior editor of O.Henry magazine.

Food for Thought

Force The

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Street Level

Up on the RoofWhere everything is green and the views are something special

By Jim SchloSSer

In Jennifer Stiles’ work, the venerable beach music group The Drifters helps describe her mission.

“Right smack dab in the middle of town I’ve found paradise that’s trouble proof. Up on the roof.”

Stiles of High Point is a co-partner with Carol Lawless of Pleasant Garden of the “Green Roof Gals,” devoted to planting roof gardens in mostly urban settings.

Stiles climbs a ladder to reach a garden at the home of Charlie Lovett — a novelist, expert on writer Lewis Carroll and playwright — in Winston-Salem’s fashionable Buena Vista neighborhood.

“Oh no,” she admonishes a plant. “You can’t live up here.” She jerks out a piece of English ivy that she’s identified as an invasive

species. She can’t allow it to multiply in the elevated garden, which can be admired from Lovett’s office, where even the billiards table is saturated with books and periodicals.

“I love working here,” says Lovett, whose latest book is The Bookman’s Tale: A Novel of Obsession. “I’m just starting to see green.”

He loves eating lunch in his study, looking at the garden and hearing the waterfall below. The waterfall is part of an elaborately landscaped backyard done

by Lee Rogers of Greensboro (and O.Henry’s garden writer). Stiles maintains it, as well as the rooftop garden that she created herself a year ago.

While she has done landscaping work for a number of years, she is just now getting into roof gardens. They appeal to the eye and benefit the environment.

She planted a generous amount of a plant, sedum, in Lovett’s garden. Sedum has many varieties and blooms in many colors. Sedum, she says, is extremely heat and drought tolerant. “You don’t have to worry about watering it all the time.”

She explains Lovett’s garden is a modular variety. It was built and seeded elsewhere and moved to the home. Presto. A garden measuring 12 by 14 feet. It looked sad and brown this past winter, but spring brought color and more will come in summer.

“It really greens up in the summertime,” Stiles says.Before Stiles installed the garden, the roof had problems. She says “rain was

coming off like a waterfall.”The garden protects the roof from the elements, such as rain and ice, that

cause it to degrade. The garden, she, says absorbs about 80 percent of the rainwa-ter. As a result, the roof will last about twenty-five years longer than a roof without a garden, she says.

Another plus is that the screen porch below the garden stays cooler in summer.

Stiles and Lawless say they are talking with six other potential clients in the Piedmont about roof gardens. Stiles also is exploring wall gardens.Ph

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“It’s a vertical garden instead of a horizontal garden,” she says. “It can really cover an ugly area and create green space.”

She also does shade gardens, including one in Sedgefield. It’s a place to sit in a cool setting to meditate or do whatever one pleases.

Roof gardens, of course, are not new. They date long before B.C., with the most famous being the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. The Europeans have had roof gardens for generations. In New York, the High Line — an abandoned elevated rail line — has become essentially a roof garden that the public can stroll along.

Lots of New York rooftops have been beautified with gardens. In Greensboro, sections of the roof of the almost-completed north tower at Moses Cone Hospital will have plants and other greenery. City council member Nancy Hoffman says she plans a roof garden on the old building she owns in the 300 block of South Elm Street.

If it’s landscaping or maintenance, Stiles and Lawless just about do it all. Stiles even cares for a koi pond at a home in Irving Park. When she drives to that house, she passes the McAlister mansion on Country Club Drive, built before 1920. She looks at the house’s two large sunrooms and says they’d be ideal for rooftop gardens.

Her business partner Carol Lawless has spent the last seventeen years in landscaping, starting as a part-time worker at the city’s Bicentennial Garden on Hobbs Road. She then went full time with the city to help create the Greensboro Arboretum in Lindley Park. She maintains many conventional gardens, a number of them in Irving Park.

Now, word is getting around about the Rooftop Gals.“We are getting a lot of attention and a lot of questions,” says Stiles, a New

Hampshire native, who settled with her husband, Dan, in High Point about twelve years ago. She was an adjunct teacher of plant life and, of all things,

Spanish, at Guilford Technical Community College for five years. She says she picked up Spanish from her school days and while working on landscaping proj-ects with Hispanic workers.

Stiles’ worn Nissan truck makes its way often to Lovett’s house, where she checks for weeds in Lee Rogers’ landscaping creation and the roof garden. The price of a roof garden runs $30–35 per square foot, which is high. The sedum needs to be anchored to a base that includes volcanic ash. Often, a structural engineer is needed to determine if a roof can support a garden. Of course, the cost is returned from roofs not wearing out as fast. Lawless says a goal is to find ways to bring down initial costs. Right now, they buy materials from various growers. They intend to start growing their own roof plants at Lawless’ greenhouse. That should result in savings for clients.

Stiles specializes in small gardens and leaves the bigger projects to Lawless, who is about to begin a large conventional landscaping project at a home at Smith Mountain Lake in Virginia.

As the garden at the Lovett home indicates, Stiles prefers doing residential work, although a big potential exists for commercial roof gardens.

“Our goal,” Stiles says, “is to let people know of the environmental benefits of roof gardens. If everyone does a little it adds up to a lot.”

Returning to her truck, she says of the Lovett garden, “The maintenance is so easy it is incredible.” She estimates it needs only about an hour of care a month.

With this garden, in the words of the Drifters, “Everything is all right, up on the roof.” OH

Jim Schlosser is a contributing editor of O.Henry magazine He can be reached at [email protected]

Street Level


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O.Henry Traveler

By lee Pace

The drive is exactly eighty-five miles from the intersection of Elm and Market streets, picking up U.S. Highway 52 in Winston-Salem, past the bare rock faces of Pilot Mountain and through downtown Mount Airy, where you can stop for a haircut at Floyd’s Barber Shop or lunch at the Blue Bird Diner. Five miles be-yond the state line into Virginia you turn off a winding two-lane road into the 12,000-acre playground known as Primland. (Fair warning: Weekends hanging around the house might never be the same after a sortie into this wonderland of golf, ATV rides, kayaking, culinary ram-pages, seaweed wraps and sleeping respites amidst down pillows and the folds of the highest thread-count sheets for miles around.)

“The beauty of the place overwhelms people,” Alex Martin says by way of introduction as my wife, Sue, and I mount our all-terrain vehicles on a splen-did March afternoon.

Martin is prepping us and four others for a trek that will consume nearly three hours and cover almost twenty miles, taking us from our current eleva-tion of some 1,500 feet to just under 3,000 at the pinnacle of the property.

“You never know what kind of wildlife you’re going to see,” he says. “If you see a bear or a fox, it’s always a bonus.” Bears are best, he says: “They can run faster than the posted speed limit.”

With the sun on our faces and the wind in our hair, we navigate Primland’s labyrinth of trails, with some paths cutting along original wagon roads more than a century old. We dash across meadows, up hillsides, through creek fords, over tree trunks, into mud and come kissing-close to the preponderance of native rhododendron. We climb as high as Rainy Gap

Overlook, where some thirty miles to the southwest Pilot Mountain looms in the late-afternoon haze. Just to the north you can see a gorge, a ridge of mountains and then the five fingers of navigable land on which the opulent Primland Lodge and golf course are situated. Farther to the north and the east is the range of mountains known as the Blue Ridge.

“People are amazed at the views from up here,” says Steve Helms, Primland’s general manager, who’s lived and worked in the area all his life. “On a clear day, you can see the skyscrapers in Winston-Salem and Greensboro.” Also look for the blue tint of the mountains fading into the distance: “People look at the mountains and say, ‘Oh, that’s why they call it the Blue Ridge.’”

It was this natural beauty, rugged terrain and abundant wildlife that first attracted Frenchman Didier Primat to the land in the late 1970s. Primat, grandson of one of the founding partners of the oil-field-services conglomerate Schlumberger, began in 1977 acquiring what would eventually become a tract of more than 12,000 acres. At first, he tapped the land’s resources for the pro-duction of wood chips and fireplace kindling. But his long-range vision was to turn the property into a sporting and leisure enclave, which he launched in the mid-1980s, taking visitors on guided pheasant hunts and rainbow-trout fishing forays in the Dan River. Since hunting is mostly a fall and spring pur-suit, the idea of filling in the summer calendar with golf made good sense.

“Mr. Primat was very big into nature,” Helms says of the man who, upon his death in 2008, was estimated by Forbes to be worth $2.3 billion. “He was a steward of the environment. His goal was to take good care of the property while opening it up for others to enjoy in a variety of activities.”

Expansion of the Primland resort infrastructure geared up early in the 21st century, and several well-known American golf course architects surveyed the property and deemed the upper stretches too rugged for a golf course. Their recommendation? Build it on the lower portion of the property, toward the south boundary. Primat’s European connections led him to ask English golf architect Donald Steel to survey the land. Steel was captivated by the high elevations of the north expanse. After he learned those acres had once been used for farming, he realized that grass would flourish there, meaning a course could, in fact, be positioned there.

“I saw the land and was just awed by it,” says Steel, who lives in Sussex, England, and visits Primland annually. “I felt we had to make a golf course

PrimlandThe Ultimate Mountain Escape

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work up on top of the mountain. Unique is an overplayed word, but nothing else fit Primland.

“That was a key decision in the evolution of Primland,” adds Brian Alley, director of golf, standing to the right side of the first fairway, looking down some 1,500 feet into the Dan River gorge below. Most mountain golf courses are built in a valley so that golfers look up at the mountains all around them. “We are up and you look down,” Alley says. “It makes all the difference.”

The course, which opened in 2006, features bent-grass tees. Fairways, greens and roughs are of bluegrass and native fescue. There are no water hazards that come into play, though frequent are the deep chasms that tumble from the tees on the course’s five par-3 holes. Interestingly, Steel built only eleven fairway bunkers. The greens are massive and laced with intricate ledges and mounds. There is no real estate along the fairways — save for the 800-square-foot treehouse perched on a mountain ledge near the fourth green, which is available to guests wanting the ultimate in intimacy and views. Custom-built restroom facilities, made of reclaimed lumber from old tobacco barns in the area, blend into the heavily wooded landscape. The ruggedness of the land and distance between some greens and tees make it off-limits for walking golfers.

It’s difficult golf, certainly, and it’s not made any easier by all the visual stimuli.

“There is a remoteness about Primland, a sense of escape, that is special,” Steel says. “Golf courses have been built in every landscape imaginable but only rarely on mountain peaks. Primland sits on top of the world.”

Standing higher than the golf course is the palatial Primland Lodge, a 72,000-square-foot facility that opened in the summer of 2009 and spares no detail or expense in surrounding its guests in understated luxury. Aesthetics

have always been critical at Primland — witness the obviously costly decision to build the lodge parking lot underground and thus spare the serene land-scape the blight of rows of automobiles.

The lodge proper is made of cedar, but the exterior walls of the distinctive silo appendage on the northwest corner are made of stone. The silo towers five floors and houses the golf pro shop, a library, the two-level Pinnacles Suite, plus an observatory with a giant telescope that can hone in on Usra Minor, some 27 million light years away. The Primat family’s European roots — the resort is now owned by Didier’s eight children — come through in the lodge’s design and décor. The lodge’s twenty-six rooms and suites are outfitted with miniscule extras that pack a wallop. Each guest has a Keurig coffee maker, fresh fruit, a telephone that can be answered no matter where you are in the bathroom, a pair of downy terry-cloth robes and turndown service featuring a treat of velvety chocolate.

Of course, a day’s activities at Primland can be quite a drain on a body’s energy reserves, so the spa and the resort’s collection of restaurants are ideal for relaxation and restoration. The Elements features fine dining (filet mignon with foie gras and caramelized onions); the 19th pub is relaxed (Kobe burger with pimento cheese); and the Stables Saloon is middle-of-the-road (rib-eye with smoked bacon-cream leek potatoes). The Tobacco Barn sits a short stroll from the lodge and is stocked with cigars, cognacs and liqueurs. It’s a fine spot to wind down a long, active day and reflect that although you’re only an hour from home by auto, you’re far, far away in every other respect. OH

Chapel Hill writer Lee Pace has written about his golf travel experiences for more than twenty-five years.

O.Henry Traveler


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By Tom BryanT

“Hey, Dad, check this out.” Tommy was visiting us for a few days and was kicked back in the sunroom watching TV. I had just gotten back from washing the old Bronco, which had been sitting in the garage nearly all winter acquiring a thick layer of dust.

“Whatcha got, buddy roe?”“Look at this Bronco these people are restoring. It’s like yours.”Sure enough, the folks on the automotive show that Tom was watching

were in the middle of taking the body off a 1976 Bronco Sport, a lot like mine. The only difference was mine was drivable, and the one they were working on was a rust bucket. The guy who evidently was in charge was commiserating about all the money it was going to cost to fix up the vehicle and, at the same time, he was berating the folks actually working on the thing for taking too much time.

“Don’t tell me there’s actually a show on TV about repairing cars?”“Yes sir,” he replied. “And it’s pretty popular. Last episode, he redid an

old Mustang and was going to sell it for $60,000; but during the first test drive, somebody ran into the car and totaled it. The fellow who hit ’em didn’t have insurance. There were all kinds of bleeping during that conversa-tion.” We both laughed.

“Wow, a reality show about old cars.” I sat down to watch it a bit. The

mechanics were hammering and sweating and bleeping at each other with one problem after another. “You know, Tom, these reality shows are all over the place now. The History Channel is full of ’em. The other evening I flipped to it thinking I’d see something enlightening like the fall of the Roman Empire, but the program playing was some guy who owned a pawn shop buying and selling stuff.”

“It must be working,” Tommy said. “The two days I’ve been here, I’ve watched one right after another.”

“Don’t get too excited. I think these reality shows are just a cheap way to produce TV. That’s one reason your mom and I don’t watch it much. Enjoy while you can, because like everything else that’s cheap, it’ll go away before long.” I went back outside to put the Bronco in the garage.

The program that Tom was watching got me thinking about the old days back in the ’50s when I was a new driver. There was nothing more magical to me at that time than a new car just off the dealer’s lot. Unfortunately, my dad’s car was a 1957 Chevrolet station wagon, very utilitarian, and yet, the car had a lot of character just like the first auto that Dad bought for me, a 1940 Chevrolet Special Deluxe. It was a grand automobile, black with four doors, and the back two, known as suicide doors, opened opposite the front two. I had a great time with that vehicle. It hauled me all over the country, and I traded it in on an MGB the year Linda and I got married. Like all the other cars I’ve owned, I wish I still had the “Old Forty.”

And that’s another thing about those times — youngsters treated auto-mobiles as if they were the most important things in the world. There is a photo hanging in the Smithfield Barbeque restaurant in Laurinburg, North Carolina, of a group of boys, had to be in the early ’50s, who were leaning

The Sporting Life

‘Old Forty’ and FriendsOnce upon a time, a set of wheels was a rolling love affair


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over a car engine, maybe a ’40s’ hot rod of some kind. All that was visible were the backsides of the youngsters as they scrutinized the workings under that raised hood.

Since we wanted to keep all of our cars, even when they were worn down to a nub, maybe that’s why we can still fi nd rare rusted-out hulks like the one the fellows on Tom’s TV show were working on.

The average car today is just another mode of transportation, to be used and discarded like an old pair of shoes. I can remember every automobile that I’ve had the pleasure of owning, and there is not one that I wouldn’t love to have sitting in my driveway again. As a matter of fact, John D. MacDonald said it better than I ever could in one of his Travis McGee novels. “People hate their cars. Daddy doesn’t come proudly home with the new one any more and the family doesn’t come racing out, yelling ‘WOW.’ And the neighbors don’t come over to admire it.”

Cars today look depressingly alike, and I think maybe that’s why I gravitate to something a little unusual, like the Toyota FJ Cruiser I’m driving now. At least I can fi nd it in a parking lot.

I parked the old Bronco in her customary spot in the garage and returned to the house. The Weather Channel reported a storm brewing, and Tom was getting ready to head back to his home in the mountains. “You’d better get packed, son. That storm is supposed to dump a lot of snow in Boone tonight.”

He fl ipped off the TV. “I’m all packed and ready to roll as soon as Mom gets back from the grocery store. By the way, they sold that old Bronco for $45,000. Look at all that money you’ve got sitting in your garage. You don’t ever drive that old thing. Why don’t you sell it?”

“Nope,” I replied. “I’ve got too many good memories with that old truck. There is one in particular of you and Paddle sitting on the tail-gate at the Alamance Wildlife Club. Paddle was just a pup, you were about 5, and the Bronco was brand new. It seems like long ago, but all I have to do to relive those days is back that old vehicle out of the garage and take a spin. You remember that when I’m gone and the truck is yours.”

“This summer I’m going to take it back to the mountains to work on,” he replied. “There is some rust on a couple panels I want to cut out and maybe I’ll get it painted. I know some folks over in Boone who would do a great job.”

Yep, I thought as I helped Tom haul stuff to his pickup. The acorn really doesn’t fall far from the tree. OH

Tom Bryant, who graduated from Elon and lived in Alamance County for decades, is a lifelong outdoorsman and O.Henry’s Sporting Life columnist.

The Sporting Life

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We build custom homes from $350,000 to over $1 million and have becomeknown for our attention to detail, creativity and exceptional customer care.

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Life of Janeil

luSt

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By

mer

idit

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arte

nS

By Jane Borden

Obviously I’d seen a Chihuahua before. Those Taco Bell commercials were very popular. So I’d also heard the dogs speak Spanish. But I’d never met one before I moved to New York City.

Mind you, this was before the tiny animals fulfilled the literal definition of their “toy” breed signifier and found themselves yipping from inside bejeweled purses of be-blonded women with expendable incomes. These small cultural pioneers breached even the shores of Irving Park. But that was later. When I grew up in Irving Park, everyone either had or wanted a Labrador retriever, the Jeep Wranglers of dogs, by which I mean all of my friends at Page High also owned or coveted a Jeep Wrangler, in either burgundy or forest green, the two most popular colors that year in the J. Crew and L.L. Bean catalogs. I’m surprised we didn’t dye our dogs mauve.

So the first Chihuahua I ever met was Lonnie, beloved companion of the superintendent in my first New York City apartment building on the Upper West Side. I don’t remember the super’s name. We didn’t see him much. He lived in the basement and kept to himself. Like the doltish young Southerner I was, I tried overly hard to make nice with Mr. Super and be friends. He rebuffed my overtures with curt replies. Sometimes he turned and walked away. I attributed his disinterest to either a Spanish-language barrier or a gruff personality, the two most solipsistic explanations. In retrospect, it’s obvious I wasn’t an attractive social outlet. Hanging out with a bunch of monogrammed white girls fresh out of the sorority had to have been pretty low on his bucket list, falling underneath waiting in line for tickets to a movie that winds up being sold out, and getting a back wax.

But Lonnie, I saw a lot. My bedroom was also in the basement and contained a doorway to a small corridor only otherwise attached to Mr. Super’s

apartment. In this corridor, Lonnie lived, his crate tucked between a washer-dryer combo and the super’s elaborate showcase of tools and

supplies. Several nights a week, if I didn’t hear Mr. Super’s television blare, I’d creep open the door

to Narnia and visit Lonnie. He was always happy to see me, which made the

shaking confusing. Lonnie trembled. All of the time. Many Chihuahuas do. Because they’re cold. Because

they’re afraid. Or maybe excited. There are several theories. He was eager to be visited and patted, though, so I assumed if

the shaking was from fear, it had to be the good kind, as if my visits were his equivalent of skydiving.

Usually I played with him in his humble hallway, but sometimes I brought him into my apartment, especially if my roommates and I had friends there. Lonnie was not only a fine companion, but an excellent party trick. I referred to these excursions as Lonnie’s Great Escapes, an unfortunately prescient moniker.

One evening, I came home from work to some front-stoop buzz among the neighbors: Lonnie was missing. Since that morning.

I hustled inside to ensure the dog wasn’t in my apartment somewhere, shivering on top of a Laura Ashley comforter. But no Lonnie.

Had he run away? Been hit by a car? Mr. Super didn’t talk to me about the incident, but it was impossible not to be moved by his apparent grief. He wandered the block for a couple of days in anxiety until hope eventually gave way to despondency.

Then, a miracle. One of Mr. Super’s friends spied Lonnie in a neighborhood yard, hopped the fence and stole the dog back. It was a Saturday or Sunday, and I happened to be outside the building when Lonnie came home. Mr. Super tossed the tiny animal over and over again into the air, his face awash in pulsing tears, shouting, “Lonnie! Lonnie! Lonnie!” And all the while, the dog trembled. OH

Jane Borden is a native of Greensboro and the author of the highly-acclaimed memoir I Totally Meant To Do That.

LonnieA small, trembling love story

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50 May 2013 The Art & Soul of Greensboro


May 2013

First PresbyterianSitting in church every Sunday, I hated the hats

I had to wear. They were small things with net

attached. Or hard plastic fruit. They did not fit

and sometimes they fell into the aisle or my lap

if my mother had not pierced their velveteen

skins with hat pins she wove through my stiff

hair-sprayed hair. There was no way to scratch

my small soul through those hats. No way

I could sit through the sermons if not daydreaming

out of them, using the blank wall beside the piano

as movie-screen, imagining myself hatless, free

of my hair spray and beehive, my hair grown

miraculously long, trailing hat pins across

the small town, heading north toward what soon

would be Interstate. What happened next?

Let us pray, said the preacher and I came awake,

though I shut my eyes dutifully. What was

he saying that I should heed, who was this God

who knew everything? Why should I pull on a girdle

and hose for His sake and sit waiting for Him

to call? Just As I Am, we sang, closing the service.

My soul took a deep breath and walked out.

—KathrynStriplingByer

PaintingbyWilliamMangum


Fiction by Quinn Dalton

In the spring of Ben and Mia’s second year of marriage, Ben’s father moved into a golfing retire-ment community in the town where he lived and offered to give Ben and Mia his house. The catch was that they could not sell it or rent it right away. They had to move from New York and live in it at least a year. “It’s an opportunity,” he’d told them, “to try a differ-ent kind of life.”

“He wants to uproot us,” Mia said to Ben the evening he told her about his father’s call. “He wants to control our lives.”

The fact that she’d just awakened from a nap had perhaps contributed to her reaction. Ben had just come home — 9 at night, not unusual. Banker’s hours — ha! They probably wouldn’t finish dinner until 11, and she’d be up until 3 after sleeping this late in the evening. But Ben would be asleep by 11:30 and up at 6:30 in time to hit the gym before heading downtown.

“He can’t control our lives,” Ben said. “We don’t have to accept the offer.” He seemed noncom-mittal, dismissive even, of the idea, unthreading his tie from his collar and sliding his shirt from his shoulders in their tiny living room. But Mia could tell he liked the idea, perhaps had already decided. How could she tell? It was his even tone, the way he looked away from her after he’d made his point, as if he’d be content never to speak of it again.

But they did, for that night and several nights following. Mia argued that it was unfair of his father to offer the house with conditions. The house had no sentimental value to warrant them — Ben hadn’t grown up in it or even in that town; his parents had moved there after his father sold his business so he could golf nearly year-round. And now, less than a year after Ben’s mother had died, his father wanted to move out and yet keep the house at the same time, and not just keep the house but install Ben and Mia in it.

“Install us?” Ben said.“You don’t offer gifts with conditions,” Mia said. “That’s not love.”“This isn’t a gift,” Ben said. “It’s an investment. We can take it or leave it.”“Or, we could sell it and use the money to buy something here. Where we actually want to live.”Ben sighed. He looked out the windows, which, if not darkened, would’ve revealed a view they paid

The Garden


handsomely for. This was their perch, as Mia called it, the place they had picked out together, small but light-filled and high above the

street noise. This was their red couch, their white shag rug, their heavy lacquered Chinese screen, a gift from Mia’s great-aunt, in the corner.“Do you really want to live here?” he asked her.

So they moved, not because Ben was appeasing his father, Mia knew, but because Ben was tired — of the noise, the striving chaos. He wasn’t even 30, but he was tired. He could transfer to another

office in the same company — for less money but it would go farther where they were headed, and of course there’d be no

house payment. And there were several colleges and univer-sities in the town or within a short drive, so Mia could take some classes or perhaps do some adjunct teaching until she

figured out her next step.Next step — Ben’s code phrase for pulling herself together. He had it all

worked out, and he wanted her to do the same. This wasn’t, to her mind, un-reasonable. But her body had resisted. Her sleeping habit had arrived gradually, after she’d finished her master’s in art history and couldn’t seem to make herself get a Ph.D. or at least a teaching certificate. She slept later and later in the morn-ings after Ben left, and then slept more as soon as she got home from her hourly job at a friend’s mother’s gallery, waking in the evening dark, sometimes just when she heard Ben at the door. She tried to look as if she’d just been reading or watching TV, but he could always tell.

She was able to drift like this because of his income; she knew this. She’d been raised to pursue a career, not to marry her

money, as her parents, who both worked, had put it. She didn’t think the straight-A, driven teenager she’d been would very much like the woman she’d become. And now she would be dragged along in Ben’s wake to a town she’d never even heard of before she met him. The thought just

made her want to sleep more.

They arrived with their truck at their new home in blooming spring — in New York, only small hard buds dotted the gated trees — and they were fully unpacked in a weekend. Ben did most of the work on both ends of the move. Ben’s father had left the furniture he didn’t need and had told them they could do with it what they wanted.

“Oh, we don’t have to live with it for a year first?” Mia said. She heard Ben sigh. He never took the bait. She wondered why he put up with her. Actually her exact thought was, what about me does he want? She shivered in the

warm air and rubbed her arms, as if to erase the question.The house itself was beautiful, on a shady corner lot in a historic neighbor-

hood, lovingly restored and maintained. Three bedrooms upstairs — the master facing east — and downstairs a spacious front room, den, dining room and kitchen, the last two of which faced west. Mia had to admit she liked that about the house, how their day began in the east and ended in the west.

Mia had of course been to the house before, though only twice, first when Ben had introduced her to his parents and then less than a year later, when his

mother had died shortly after a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. His suffering over the loss had made her love him desperately. Once, crying, he’d said

how sorry he was that his mother would never meet her grandchildren. It took Mia a moment to realize that he was talking about the chil-

dren they would have someday. This was, she thought, the fundamental difference between them — he was always looking ahead. And she seemed

less and less able to.One thing she’d noticed. She hadn’t felt the constant urge to sleep since the

move. In fact she wasn’t sleeping very well at all. When she finally did drift off late at night, she jolted out of dreams that seemed to be distorted visions of their former life. Great swirls of color, like the gallery canvases, jumbled universes of lights spinning into each other, faceless shapes trying to tell or ask her things. A sense of falling from a high place, of being pulled down toward the dark water

below — an actual force drawing her, demanding her — shadows and light sliding over a roiling surface.

On the first day Ben went into his new office, Mia took down all the heavy curtains in the house, even the sheers, folded them neatly and called the Salvation Army to pick them up. Light filled the rooms.

She hadn’t remembered the neighbor’s house, which she could see through the now-bared kitchen windows — green siding, white shutters, picket-fenced front lawn and then the back: not a yard but a tangle — a lovely tangle — of flow-ers and herbs and climbing vines. A sort of mist seemed to float over it even in the warming afternoon. She wished she could walk through the gate and sit in one of the shaded Adirondacks, just breathe in all that color.

This view led her to a decision. She would paint the entire cream-walled house, as a way to make it hers — theirs. The garden would be her inspiration: coral for the kitchen, amber for the front room, moss green for the dining room. When she told Ben her plan, he’d liked it, or at least seemed to. But she got the feeling she could paint the whole place black, and he wouldn’t complain. At least she’d be choosing something.

“But the curtains,” he said. “What are we going to do for privacy?” “We didn’t have curtains in our old place,” Mia said.“But that was New York,” he said.“We don’t have anything to hide, do we?”It was clear he didn’t know how to respond to this. But so what if people

wanted to look in on them when they were cooking their meals, getting ready for bed? It would give them something to do in all this spacious calm and quiet.

The weeks passed, and Mia kept busy, filling room after room with color. She didn’t bother to try to meet neighbors or to work in the yard. Her arms ached perpetually, but she was happy with the work, to the point where she didn’t like to think about finishing.

For their bedroom she chose the color of a flower she’d seen on a small tree that shaded the Adirondacks next door: The early blooms had come in flame red, and just as changing, depending on the light. It wasn’t all that far off from the characters on Mia’s beloved Chinese screen, the layered strokes seemingly three dimensional against the glossy black. She thought she might try blending several paints to achieve the effect. But first she would pick a base that was as close as possible.

One morning after Ben left, she saw an older couple next door from the kitchen window — a tall but stooped man with white hair, and a woman, his wife, presumably, with hair as black as his was white, obviously dyed. They were tending the garden — snipping and watering, moving slowly and carefully among the greenery.

Mia waited until they went inside and then walked out into the backyard and across their driveway, paint swatches in hand. She angled toward the back of their house, up to their gate. She was holding up her swatches and squinting past them at the red blooms when someone called a hello.

Mia looked up, startled, but couldn’t locate the source of the voice. “Jeannie Folk,” the woman said, emerging from the shade. Her too-black hair was gathered into a tight knot on the top of her head and she wore bright lipstick. Mia wondered how she would look at this stage in life, and whether she would dye her hair and wear bright colors and not worry about the effect. Mia told her about the garden’s role in her painting project.

“Well, glad to know it will have some measure of immortality,” the woman said, smiling. She told Mia that the garden was mostly her husband’s creation. “I handle the cooking.”

In fact, she added, she would be doing a lot of cooking soon, as they were having a midsummer’s party in a couple of weeks. “Just a few neighbors and friends,” Mrs. Folk said. “Nothing fancy.”

Mia finished the bedroom the day of the party. By then most of the blossoms had fallen from the tree next door, and she felt she had preserved something with her work. She was setting her brushes out to dry on the porch rail when Ben got home. He called hello to her as he went in the side door from the drive-way. She went inside, listening to him moving between the closet and dresser,


changing clothes. She was in the kitchen when he came back down. She opened the fridge and pulled out two beers.

“What do you think?” she asked, handing him one.

Ben took the beer and looked at her for a moment. “It’s like being inside a fire engine. I don’t know how anyone’s going to sleep in there.”

Mia shook her head. “Anyone?” She reminded him then about the invite from the neighbors.

“My father’s coming in tonight,” Ben said. “He asked if he could stop by.”“We’ll keep an eye out for him,” Mia said.Ben called his father but got voice mail. He didn’t leave a message. “Probably

already on the plane,” he said.They brought a bottle of wine to the gathering. Mia wore a sundress, her hair

pinned up. The evening air was only slightly warm, small breezes threading over their skins. They came to the garden gate, where they could see people gathered — two other couples besides Jeannie and her husband, both slightly younger than the hosts but much older than Mia and Ben.

Ben squeezed her hand. “Wild party,” he whispered as Jeannie came over to welcome them in. “Be careful.”

Introductions, then drinks, a golden liqueur made from some kind of fruit grown by Mr. Folk. Mia sipped hers a little fast, listening to him describe its origins. She fixed a plate of hors d’oeuvres — all various fruits and vegetables which had apparently also come from the garden — to settle her stomach. What had Jeannie been cooking all week? Mia wanted meat, or at least some bread. She found a small basket of crackers finally and took a stack of them, walking away from the group so she could eat them quickly. From this short distance, she heard Ben talking about the reasons for the housing bubble. He sounded so assured, so relaxed. She didn’t know how he managed the work he did each day. How he could stand it.

What was she going to do? Ben was right: She had to choose a path. She stared at their house. It looked like a painting in the golden evening light. She couldn’t believe they lived there; she felt for a moment that she had stumbled inside of one of her dreams. Their bedroom — Ben was right again — was too red. She would have to redo it. She shook her head. Thinking about anything when she was half-drunk was ridiculous.

Jeannie brought her a glass of wine. Mia laughed when she took it. “I don’t think I need this.”

“Porter’s putting the chicken on the grill soon.”“Oh, did he raise that here, too?” Mia said, then bit her lip. “No, but of course he learned their life histories from the farmer he bought

them from at the market,” Jeannie said, smiling. “He does go on, doesn’t he?” Her husband was holding forth at that moment, in fact, and Ben was listening with total focus.

Mia smiled. “They look perfect for each other,” she said, and Jeannie laughed at this.

“You’ll find that even their most insufferable qualities become endearing over time,” Jeannie said. “Now, let me get that chicken out here to move him along.”

She gestured for Mia to follow and she did, offering help; Jeannie said to just make herself comfortable. Mia drank in the warm wool smell of the carpets, the heavy wood molding. She thought of her great-aunt’s house, the one who’d given her the screen. Like in Aunt Maureen’s tiny Cape Cod, the walls here were covered with paintings. “Are any of these yours?”

“They’re all mine,” Jeannie said. “Ben told me you were an artist too?”“No,” Mia said. Had he said that, or had she just gotten it

wrong? “I study art.”“It takes an artist to study art,” Jeannie said. She lifted the platter of

fragrant, marinated chicken, refused Mia’s help again. “Just get the screen door for me,” she said.

The sun had set, and the garden was shadowed under an indigo sky. The sizzling meat made Mia almost dizzy with hunger. Finally, they were served, and Porter gestured for her to sit next to Ben. But eating did nothing to sharpen her blurred vision. It was strange that she felt this off-balance — maybe she had some kind of bug. As soon as she felt like she could, she rose to take in her plate. In the hall bath she tried to let herself be sick, but nothing came.

When she came outside again, a sour taste in her mouth, Jeannie was gathering plates. Ben wasn’t with the group. She wandered toward the back of the garden, looking for him. She found him talking with Porter again. He was gesturing toward the small tree whose now-fallen blossoms had inspired Mia’s choice of bedroom color. When Mia came alongside Ben, she noticed he was swaying a bit on his feet. Porter held his bottle of liqueur, which he offered to her — did he want her to swig from it? She shook her head, but Ben obliged.

“Now, if you want to settle your stomach,” Porter was saying. “Eat one of those?” Ben said. Mia looked where Porter was pointing, at a

branch of the small tree, where there hung several small, dark fruits; she hadn’t seen them before. Ben looked doubtful, but he picked one. He held it in his hand — it was bigger than a grape but smaller than a plum.

“Yes — you handle the end with the beginning,” Porter said, grinning and lifting the bottle. “Go ahead, try.”

But Ben rolled the fruit out of his hand into Mia’s outstretched one. She tested its cool weight. She raised it to her mouth — how much worse could it make her feel than she already did? — and saw, just as she bit into it, the wince of fear on Ben’s face. She offered it back to him, but he shook his head.

Porter saw too, and laughed. “Trust me; it’s good!”The fruit was watery, almost tasteless. Mia kept her eyes on Ben, who con-

tinued to stare at the fruit in her hand. She let it fall to the ground. “You don’t care about me,” she said. She wasn’t sure of the words until she heard her voice saying them.

“Of course I do,” Ben said. “Why do you say that?”Porter said something low, something like, “Now, now,” but Mia turned for

the gate. Ben got ahead of her, stopped her.“What is wrong with you?”“With me? You gave me something you were afraid of.” She tried to sidestep

him, but he blocked her again.“Mia, this is crazy. I love you.”“But you love yourself more.”And Ben, opening his mouth to speak, but no words following. The swing of

headlights just then, dragging across their faces: Ben’s father’s car, turning into their driveway. And both of them frozen, watching his father walk to the door, ring the doorbell, peer in their front window, check his phone.

They stayed still until he drove away again. For Mia, this was as much an admission as anything.

She managed thank yous and goodbyes, kissing Jeannie’s cheek, trying to smile at Porter’s confused, concerned expressions.

They staggered home, and Mia pulled off her dress before falling into the bed and deeply asleep. When she woke up, it was dawn. Ordinarily she would’ve tried to go back to sleep, but this time she knew she wouldn’t. They’d been stu-pid, she thought, just drunk. Beside her, Ben breathed regularly. She knew what she was about to do would wake him, but she couldn’t stop herself. She walked over to her great-aunt’s Chinese screen. She braced her bare feet on the wooden floor and began to pull. When Ben sat up, his face sleep-soft and startled, she had dragged it almost all the way across the brightening windows. OH

QuinnDaltonistheauthorofanovelandtwostorycollections.Visitquinndalton.com.


Womenin PhilanthroPy

luncheon

Featuring Keynote Speaker

Dr. maya angelouRenaissance Woman &

Best Selling Author

11:30 am -1:00 pm Grandover Resort & Conference Center

One Thousand Club Road

Registration begins at 11:00 am Lunch served promptly at 11:30 am

Tickets $50

Register by May 10th at UnitedWayGSO.org/rsvp

tuesDay, may 14, 2013

Join us for the 3rd annual luncheon presented by

United Way of Greater Greensboro

Women’s Leadership Council.

Celebrating the influence of Women.

NICO’sTaste of Italy

Five courses paired with Five half glasses of wine $40 per person

House-made pastas, sauces, desserts using fresh,

local ingredients.

NICO’S201 N. Elm St. Lunch: Mon-FriDinner: Mon-Satnicorestaurantandbar.com

Live Jazz every Friday night

Jewelry • Clothes • Shoes • Home Accessories

215 South Elm StreetHistoric Downtown Greensboro

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DOWNTOWN Greensboro


A F e w M i n u t e s w i t H

Chip CallawayWell-worn Weejuns and a true son of Mayberry


Tby noah Salt • PhotograPh by caSSie butler

Tweedy and collegial as a college advisor, acclaimed garden designer Paul Faulkner “Chip” Callaway and his Greensboro-based team of landscape architects have designed and created more than a thousand private gardens from North Carolina to Nantucket, making him one of the pre-eminent gar-den designers of America, including such prestigious landscapes at Robert E. Lee’s childhood home, Stratford Hall, the Alexander Graham Bell House in Washington, D.C., and the Ellen Biddle Shipman Garden at the home of Wake Forest University’s president. Callaway’s local pubic designs notably include Greensboro’s Historical Museum and the luxury boutique hotels (O.Henry and Proximity) of the Quaintance-Weaver hospitality group. On a warm spring afternoon recently, we dropped by the handsomely restored bungalows on Fisher Avenue where Callaway keeps both home and office — and a spectacular back garden — to put a few questions to our favorite garden guru and a spiritual advisor toO.Henrymagazine. He also does a mean impersonation of Andy Griffith, his most famous client.

OH: You’ve been based here in Fisher Park for how long? Weren’t you one of the pioneers of this neighborhood’s beautiful revitalization? CC: Indeed I was. I moved into this neighborhood from Bessemer Avenue more than twenty years ago — before even the police felt comfortable coming here, as I like to tell friends. I bought the cottage where I live first and the one next door some years after that. They share a driveway and really fit me like an old pair of Weejuns.

OH: You’re 64 now and seemingly more busy than ever. Any thoughts of slowing down to smell the roses? CC: Since I started in 1980 I’ve averaged forty garden projects a year. I’m doing a few less than that at the moment by choice but genuinely love what I do so much I could keep going for years. The greatest thing about being a garden designer is that longevity and age are not considered detriments. I.M Pei and Phillip Johnson were active into their 90s and never even reached their creative career peaks until their late 70s. Besides, gardening keeps you young in a number of ways. There’s always something new to learn. We have some exciting projects going right now.

OH: Such as?CC: We’re doing gardens for NASCAR star Kevin Harvick and rock star Chris Daughtry [the third-most successful contestant from AmericanIdol], who has a beautiful home out in Oak Ridge. We also have some wonderful private gardens here in the Triad just starting, others finishing. I’ve always loved doing smaller residential projects as opposed to large-scale land development. That’s where your creativity and vision are really challenged — to make a garden someone will enjoy for a long time.

OH: Do you have a favorite kind of residential garden to design? CC: It really depends on the landscape and the architectural motif of the house. The gardens really have to reflect the character and style of the house. That said, I think I most enjoy designing for contemporary style properties because you can be a little more adventurous and there are no rules — which make it more fun for a designer.

OH: Is that the part you most enjoy — the creation of a garden? CC: Yes, but I have a strong belief that it’s important to involve clients inti-mately in the process. They, after all, will be the ones who have to live with the garden. I want them to fall in love with it, obviously, but also fall in love with learning how to maintain their garden. That seems to happen with most of my clients, by the way.

OH: Any local examples you can share? CC: Certainly. Allen and Anne Dick of Greensboro come to mind. Their garden on Carlyle Road is about 10 years old and one of my favorite gardens we’ve done. I like a garden to unfold as you enter, with interesting elements everywhere you look, changing with the seasons, a place that encourages you to move about and look closely. They both fell in love with their garden and Anne has really become its caretaker. From my perspective, it’s a great story.

OH: You seem to have a passion for telling stories through your gardens. CC: [A hearty laugh] Oh, gracious yes. Every garden has its own story. When I walk around my garden here on Fisher Avenue, I see friends and associate stories to plantings. Gardens really are about memories. There are probably fifty to seventy-five beautiful plants that were given to me by friends, this plant that came from Elizabeth Lawrence’s garden or that plant from Alma Pinnix or Mary Hart Orr, two of Greensboro’s most beloved gardeners.

OH: Your own story is such a great story. Did you really grow bare-root mail-order roses in your father’s old bird dog pens up in Mount Airy? CC: I did. My folks were devoted church-going people, but I hated being indoors and would do anything to avoid having to go to church. A man on our street in Mount Airy was famous for his irises. I begged him to let me help him in his gar-den, and he finally let me do it. My father grew gladiolas for a famous Dutch bulb company and — in order to keep the energy in the bulbs — we always cut the flow-ers off and either sold them or fed them to the hogs. I started growing boxwood seedlings in river mud. In other words, I got hooked on it very early.

OH: And, of course, you wound up doing the gardens for Andy Griffith’s home down in Manteo. CC: That’s a funny story. I knew him from my childhood but was still surprised when he called me up and asked me to do the garden at his new home. I told him I was honored to be considered but had heard he was difficult to work with — and, given the choice, I’d rather keep my fond memories of him. He told me, “Young man, I’m not difficult but I am demanding.” I told him, “I can work with demanding.” That was the start of a great friendship. He turned out to be a lovely client, a joy to work with.

OH: That’s a great impersonation of Andy Griffith. Not bad for a true son of Mayberry.CC: Thanks. I’ve got an even better story, one I cherish. We’d just finished his garden when one day he phoned me up and said, “My architect says he’s never going to speak with you again.” I asked him what I’d done to annoy his architect and he replied, “Because all everybody that comes down here wants to talk about is that damned garden and not the house.” Another time he left a great call on my answering machine that I kept for years. “Chipper,” he said, “this is Andy Griffith. You know all those hundreds of thousands of dollars of plants and shrubs and trees you dragged down here from the Piedmont? Well, one of them died.” It turned out to be a tree. I sent a crew of four with a half-ton replacement all the way to Manteo only to discover it was a tree he’d moved. I told my crew, “Don’t drag that tree back to Greensboro.” So they planted it.

OH: Do you have a favorite place in the world?CC: The Blue Ridge Parkway and my house up in Floyd, Virginia. The flora is incredible. That place is really my version of heaven. OH


I t all came together for Todd McCain during a party at his house at 318 West Bessemer Avenue. A guest happened to mention that his sister lived in a house in Chapel Hill almost exactly like McCain’s and that it was a “kit” house — meaning it was shipped in

pieces by rail and assembled by the numbers. Earlier, McCain had heard that a house exactly like his stood in Danville, Virginia.

It turns out that all three houses are “Brentwoods” — two-story kit hous-es mail-ordered from the 1917—19 catalogue of the Aladdin Corporation of Bay City, Michigan. But forget any images you might have of modular or prefab homes. The Brentwood is an Arts & Craft style house fit for any upscale neighborhood in any American city. The catalogue depicts stunning

pictures of how the Brentwood and other Aladdin models look, with room-by-room diagrams.

The mail-order homes in the Aladdin catalogue tend to look cozy with gables, turrets, eaves, dormers and other fancy architectural touches. One model, the Lamberton, looks like a house Hansel and Gretel might have occupied. McCain’s home even features a porte-cochère, a fancy term for a porch-like structure attached to the house. Cars and, once upon a time, carriages, stopped under porte-cochères to let out people.

Aladdin and other kit builders, including Sears Roebuck and Montgomery Ward, sent by rail the entire house, including plaster for the walls, roofing, flooring, nails, paint and clapboard for the exterior or cedar shingles. The buyer supplied the land and foundations. The lumber was pre-cut and

Great American BeautiesThekithomewasatrueinnovation,thepathformillionstohomeownership.

Today,acrosstheGateCity,theyarehiddentreasuresby Jim SchloSSer • PhotograPhS by caSSie butler


numbered to fit exactly where it was supposed to go. Some people called them “the houses that came on a train.” It is likely McCain’s was unloaded from boxcars parked on a siding of a spur line that used to run along the neighborhood’s western border.

That the houses were built to last is evident by McCain’s and others in Fisher Park that have survived ninety or more years. McCain’s 2,800-square-foot house was completed in 1920, with the first occupants a surgeon at Wesley Long Hospital and his wife.

“My goal is to find other Brentwoods in North Carolina and photograph them to see how they have transitioned through the years,” says McCain, who has added a new kitchen, another bathroom and a half-bath since buying the house sixteen years ago.

He also owns the house next door, which is another sizable Aladdin kit house, a “Colonial,” formerly occupied by the late prominent Greensboro insurance man Edgar Broadhurst Jr. Standing on the sidewalk in front of his house, McCain can look west on Bessemer and see two more Aladdins, the “Shadow Lawn” model and the “Kentucky.” The latter is an eye-catching model, with a porch extending the full length of the house. More Aladdins can be found on Wharton Street, which connects with West Bessemer.

Kit homes aren’t just a Fisher Park phenomenon. McCain, who has done considerable research on Aladdin homes, has discovered that at least twenty-five were ordered for Greensboro from Aladdin in 1919 alone. At least eleven,


plus an Aladdin garage, the “Buick,” dot Fisher Park.Near War Memorial Stadium, the late World War II fighter plane ace

George Preddy grew up at 605 Park Avenue in a modest Aladdin home. There’s no telling how many Sears Roebuck kit homes are scattered about the city. Mostly during the first half of the 20th century, Sears sold 70,000 mail-order homes nationwide. Former President Jimmy Carter grew up in a Sears house in Plains, Georgia. In Greensboro, the late community activist Nettie Coad lived in a kit home, believed to be made by Sears, built probably in the 1920s and still standing at 907 Martin Luther King Jr. Drive. A house almost identical to Coad’s, also made by Sears, can be found on Wharton Street.

A house built in 1927 at 305 South Chapman Street in Sunset Hills is sometimes touted as a kit home, but that’s doubtful. Jennifer Mitchell, who prepared Sunset Hills’ National Register of Historic Places nomination, says the house was built from plans by Standard Homes Company — founded in 1917 and still in business in Raleigh. Mitchell says she believes Standard did back then what it does today: It sells house plans. It’s up to the buyer to secure materials and build it.

Benjamin Briggs, executive director of Preservation Greensboro Inc., says his organization wants to preserve as many kit homes as possible. “PGI seeks to save treasures from our past, including unusual examples of craftsmanship such as the kit home phenomena of early 20th century.”

Eight companies offered kit or mail-order homes during the period up to World War II. Aladdin, one of the busiest, once shipped more than 250 homes


to England to create a village for workers at an auto plant, according to Rebecca Hunter, author of Mail-OrderHomes:SearsHomesandOtherKitHouses.

She says in her book that architect Frank Lloyd Wright designed twenty-three mail-order homes, but only thirteen were erected, mostly in the Midwest. And, she says, 152 Sears homes went up in 1917 in Carlinville, Illinois, for oil company workers.

After the war, the companies tried to change with the times. They offered ranch and split-level homes, which became popular in the 1950s and 1960s. But demand dropped because homebuilders changed their business model. Increasingly, tract-house communities built by a single developer wouldn’t allow kit homes. And mobile homes became cheaper competitors to kit homes, although mobiles were of greatly inferior quality and design.

The question is, how do you spot a kit house? That’s what frustrates Benjamin Briggs. Driving through neighborhoods, it’s almost impossible to distinguish a kit home from its neighbors. A kit home may look almost exactly like a house built the standard way by a local contractor. People who skim through a catalogue will swear they have seen almost every house featured somewhere in the city or in the same neighborhood, although most turn out not to be kit homes. And often people live in kit homes for years without knowing it. McCain says he lived in his for eleven years before learning it was a kit. Rebecca Hunter points out that most mail-order homes “were copies of the U.S. style houses most popular during the period 1900 to 1980.”

Some people say that if you crawl into the attic of a kit house, there’s ample


evidence to indicate the house was a kit. Wood beams will be marked with numbers, they say. But the numbers may have faded away in many houses. And carpenters who built standard houses sometimes marked boards with their own numerical systems. McCain says he took part of his house down to the studs and saw no numbers, only boards marked with letters such as “BR,” for bathroom or bedroom.

In its 1917 catalogue, Aladdin boasted that “If you attempted to tear apart, or dissect an Aladdin house, the most expert contractor could not tell it from any other first-class frame dwelling because there is no difference.”

But McCain believes there are differences and those differences make kit homes preferable, he insists. Aladdin used only the best cuts of wood. The company offered $1 to an owner for every knot found on lumber shipped from Aladdin since the presence of knots meant inferior wood.

McCain flips through the 1917 catalogue to the page with the Brentwood. Ninety-six years later, “It’s interesting to see an exact replica of your house in these pages,” he says. His house contains eight rooms, not counting baths and the entry hall.

Kit homes ranged from simple four-room cottages to mansion-like edifices such as Aladdin’s Villa and Sears’ Magnolia, each costing about $3,420. The Villa included nine rooms on two floors, plus an enclosed porch, a big pantry and an enormous vestibule and entrance hall. McCain thought he had spot-ted a Villa on Sunset Drive in Irving Park, but he recently learned that house was designed by local architect Raleigh James Hughes. It certainly looks a


whole lot like a Villa, though.Why buy a kit? Rebecca Hunter says it’s hard to nail down how much

money was saved with a kit home. But 30 percent would probably be a good guess, she writes. And with all the materials present and prefitted, it only took a matter of weeks to complete a home. Most people hired local contractors to erect the kit home. But some people saved extra money by doing the work themselves, using the instruction book supplied by the manufacturer.

After discovering his house was an Aladdin kit home, McCain turned to Central Michigan University for details about the company. He discovered that when Aladdin went out of business in the 1980s, it sent its detailed ar-chives to the university. There, McCain obtained such documents as the exact order placed for his house by the James E. Latham Co., developers of Fisher Park. His was order No. 15,396. It was shipped to Greensboro on October 28, 1919. The price was $2,501.15. That pales with what the house would go for today if it were for sale — $450,000, McCain conjectures.

Another document indicates that when the Latham Co. placed its order in 1919, it was careful not to order two homes of the same style so homeowners wouldn’t have to worry about seeing a replica around the block. But that’s not to say they might not see a conventionally built home of the same design.

McCain doesn’t have to worry about seeing another Brentwood in Greensboro. Because the Brentwood was among Alladin’s top-of-the-line models, McCain says the company “would only allow one home per town.” OH



Story of A House

Adesigners’ show house mounted by the Junior League of Greensboro in a bygone-era mansion is like performing Hamlet in modern dress to critical acclaim — “O, time is out of joint” — allowing the ghosts to wander through cheerier surroundings. Because beneath its excellent bones, Adamsleigh, built with

a secure textile fortune just as the stock market crashed, had faded beyond Kitty Watkins Sydnor’s memories.

“This wasn’t a grand estate. It was just where my grandparents lived,” Kitty says. “I remember it as a happy place, filled with my grandmother Zizzy’s beautiful things.” Kitty and her cousins hid in the niches and corners. They ran across the fields with the Chesapeake Bay retrievers, swam in the pool and, at Christmas, congregated in the kitchen to scramble eggs and drink coffee.

Since her grandfather’s death in 2003, descendents of J. Hampton Adams no longer occupy the house.

Katie Redhead, a Greensboro real estate agent and preservationist, casts a less sentimental eye: “Someone nuked the landscaping — the boxwoods, the rose trellis.” Lacking lovely embellishments, the dark interior paneling became oppressive. The genius of famed Triad designer Otto Zanke had vanished. “Inside, what furnishings remained were helter skelter. But I didn’t see a shambles; I saw a marvelous piece of architecture.”

One for the AgesDesigners’ show house gilds Greensboro castle

by Deborah Salomon • PhotograPhS by Stacey Van berkel

“This wasn’t a grand estate,” says Kitty Watkins Sydnor. “It was where my grand-parents lived.”


Greensboro floral designer Randy McManus has known the house, and the family, for years. “I loved the mechanics, how the windows and screens and shutters worked perfectly.”

But, McManus says, “A house dies unless someone lives in it.”Until May 5, an opulently restored Adamsleigh will again appear occupied.With TraditionalHome magazine involved, this show house drew

designers from New York, Atlanta, Chicago and California, as well as North Carolina’s finest. And, because the event coincides with the High Point Furniture Market, attendees are expected to shuttle over for a look.

Beautiful people, beautiful rooms, win-win.

But first, meet the ghosts.

Enterprising young John Hampton “Hamp” Adams manufactured hosiery and married a High Point socialite in the early 1900s. He went to work for J. Henry Millis, a pioneer High Point industrialist. He prospered. In 1918,

the textile baron and wife Elizabeth built an elegant Italianate villa on Main Street in High Point, now the J.H. Adams Inn. As his fortune increased, the family required something grander. Adams hired Luther Lashmit, architect for Graylyn, former RJR Chairman Bowman Gray’s Winston-Salem estate, to build a Tudor castle in Greensboro, reminiscent of edifices his wife and

daughters had seen abroad. Tudor was in, Tara’s columns — gone with the wind. Let no expense be spared, Adams ordered.The mansion, begun in 1928, was completed in 1931. The finest craftsmen, sidelined by the Depression, flocked to his employ.Grander than grand, Adamsleigh stood, with cutting-edge systems, ten

bedrooms, eight bathrooms (including men’s and ladies’ powder rooms near the entrance), solaria, elevator, servants’ wing, two pools, stables, tennis court, tower, plaster moldings, circular staircase, silver safe, verandas, porte cochère and, really, a “prohibition bar room,” looking more hunting lodge than speakeasy, where guests imbibed the forbidden.

Even the kitchen — an ungodly mélange of turquoise and yellow tiles — provided a glamorous workspace for the cooking staff.

Eventually, Adamsleigh was occupied by Hamp’s daughter Elizabeth and her husband, Allen Watkins, while other daughter Nell and husband Nathan Ayers built the eerily similar Ayrshire a short distance away.

Elizabeth died in 1983. Allen Watkins occupied a portion of the house until his death in 2003. Their three sons (including Kitty Sydnor’s father) live elsewhere but retain ownership.

End of an opulent era. End of a lifestyle — and the residences required to service it.



Surprisingly, the name Adamsleigh, mimicking the British suffixes of Graylyn and Ayrshire, is unknown to many Greensboro residents. At the end of a long driveway winding up from Alamance Road, the massive manse shall be a mystery no more. For weeks, vans have unloaded the brightest, best and most beautiful furnishings. Allison Doughty and

Lauren Tilley, Junior League co-chairs, worked on the project for two years. Without the partnership of TraditionalHome magazine, the undertaking might not have been possible, Allison says. As it is, getting owners and more than twenty designers on the same page wasn’t easy. Owners stipulated some paneling be left unpainted; one designer ignored the caveat, while another insisted on hiding a period-appropriate Deco mural.

“Each room is an individual expression of the designer’s taste,” says Greensboro de-signer Bradshaw Orrell. Out-of-state designers were awarded most of the main-floor public rooms but Orrell and Randy McManus copped the desirable sunroom.

Bradshaw’s description paints the picture:“I made a story inside my head about how the room looked originally, but with a young

person’s interpretation.” His palette ranges from “dinner mint” green to pops of orange, while furnishings start at 18th century Blenheim Castle, with touches of pagodas and cabana stripes.

A landscape painting dominates one wall. Rugs are custom-made, of course. Fabrics cost up to $1,000 per yard.

Sponsor-manufacturers supply materials. Designers donate services. The finished products are for sale. The show house offers exposure to prime clientele. The Junior League hopes to realize $300,000 to be used for its overall mission and for programs at Cone





Elementary School that will help students with basic needs, improve literacy and support teachers.

Up the winding staircase from the formal public rooms — foyer, living room, den, library, dining room (with the vault-like silver safe) — the bedroom suites are lighter, more fanciful, brightened by wallpaper, delineated by moldings. A wrought-iron gate at the top of the stairs speaks to fear

of kidnapping, post-Lindbergh, as do interior doors between rooms and a secret staircase from master suite to den.

That master suite encompassing sitting room, two bedrooms, dressing rooms and baths is of Waldorf-Astoria proportions. The décor: comfort, perked with imagination. For the master’s loo, designers Lisa Mende and Traci Zeller of Charlotte commissioned black-and-white wallpaper based on architectural drawings for the house. On it will hang an Art Deco pendant made from quartz, costing $45,000, on loan from N.C. State University.

“This room reminds me of a man’s suit, mohair with grosgrain ribbons and nail heads,” Zeller says.

Descriptions exhaust superlatives. Photographs cannot fully reproduce textures, hues, dimensions of a 15,000-square-foot house set against thir-teen acres. Only being there conveys la vie en rose made possible by impec-cable taste fueled by great wealth.

“This undertaking is much bigger than we expected,” Lauren Tilley says.

“We’ve never attempted anything on this scale,” Allison Doughty adds. But their choice seems appropriate, since the Junior League was formed the year construction on Adamsleigh commenced.

Still, for Kitty Sydnor, Adamsleigh remains granny’s homestead, a place to take her small sons, one named Hampton. “This was a happy house, a place I walked around barefoot,” Kitty says. “The last time I brought my boys here we had a picnic; they ran up and down the hill in back where I picked flowers with my grandmother.”

But, Kitty concedes, the house needed work. “I’m thrilled to see the updates, that they have been respectful of the past,” she continues.“I’ll never feel a stranger here.” OH

Adamsleigh Show House 3301 Alamance Road, presented by the Junior League of Greensboro in partnership with TraditionalHome magazine, continues until May 5. Guided tours available.

Admission: $20-$25.

Information: www.juniorleagueshowhouse.com



I’m sitting on the outdoor patio at Natty Greene’s enjoying a leisurely lunch after an exhausting morning of poking around Greensboro’s hip and trendy downtown boutiques. As I walk around the corner to my favorite secret parking space on that sweet little curve on Davie Street just below the brewpub, my glance falls upon a block of nondescript brick build-ings. One storefront really stands out: The Farmer’s Wife. Wonder what that could be, I say to myself. So I stroll over there and admire the window display of tall galvanized funnels and strange wavy-wire egg baskets. I enter the store to discover a long narrow warehouse space, refreshingly quiet and filled with vintage furniture, decorative objects and lovely prints.

I don’t see any old Coke trays masquerading as antiques — “About as antique as I am!” my mother used to complain. Nor is this an antiques store for Regency highboys or Louis XV chairs. No, this is a home for beautifully crafted objects of simpler design. I wander down the aisles admiring the framed architectural drawings, attractive arrangements of feather-edge platters and the handsome collection of shadow boxes displaying rhino beetles.

Suddenly my eye is drawn to the back of the shop. Could it be? Vats of huge white hydrangea blossoms, including lots of the kind I love with lacy edges that look like they were trimmed with pinking shears. And on the oversized work counter beyond are several giant galvanized cake pans arranged with white phalaenopsis and my favorite green lady’s slipper orchids. Forget the an-tiques! I head for the back and barge into the workroom to discover that this

antique shop also houses a full-service and thriving floral-design business.Although The Farmer’s Wife looks to all intents and purposes like an

antique shop, two-thirds to three-quarters of owner Daniel Garrett’s sales come from the floral business, based purely on customers wanting under-stated, old-fashioned bouquets instead of the flashy, gimmicky arrangements that rely on blooms flown in from around the globe. Simple, straightforward and honest is the style at The Farmer’s Wife, where the flowers are allowed to speak for themselves. Interestingly, though, the floral business was completely unplanned. It just sort of happened, says Garrett, making him something of an accidental florist.

Although it also seems almost accidental, he does not regret hiring his able assistant, Stacy Curtis, who has been working with him for about ten years. “She marched into my shop brazen as could be and said you need to hire me,” says Garrett, looking somewhat professorial in his soft gray corduroys and black fleece zipper vest. Even though he told her he didn’t have any employees, nor did he want any, “She said just try me for a week and you’ll see. Well, after day two, she had me wrapped around her finger and then I was totally dependent on her.”

As the name suggests (drawn from a 1930s’ magazine for farm women), both the antique and the floral business are rooted in Garrett’s agricultural background in Pleasant Garden. “You can take the farm boy off the farm, but you can’t get the dirt from beneath his fingernails,” says Garrett. “I grew up in

The Accidental FloristAtTheFarmer’sWife,theflowersspeakforthemselves

by lee rogerS • PhotograPhS by caSSie butler


the ’50s out in the country next door to my grandfather. He planted some of his crops by the signs of the moon.”

Garrett partially credits his mom for planting the seed that blossomed into a floral business. He recalls how she used to say, “We may not have the nicest house on the road, but I’m going to have the prettiest yard.” And she did, growing thousands of her beloved bearded irises in all the colors of the rainbow. She shared them with everyone who asked in the pass-along tradition common to most gardeners — and at the very heart of The Farmer’s Wife. Ordering flowers from them is almost like having a neighbor or a friend make an arrangement for you.

But Garrett says that his aesthetic was most influenced by Southeast High School art teacher John Fox, who nominated him for the N.C. Governor’s School in 1966. There he studied with renowned ceramicist Tom Suomalainen, and the freedom and enrichment he discovered there steered him toward a career in the arts.

To the dismay of his practical-minded farm family, he enrolled at UNCG to study fine arts. A friend persuaded him to switch to art education, and he completed his BFA in 1971, just in time for the draft lottery. After a couple of years doing conscientious-objector service work at Forsyth Hospital in Winston-Salem, he began a career teaching elementary school in Guilford County.

He retired from teaching in 1980 and tried his hand at visual merchandis-ing for the Jordan Marsh department store. Two years later he and a neighbor, Jay Thrasher, opened The Farmer’s Wife at 610 South Elm Street directly

across the street from Rhyne’s Corner Cupboard, owned by competitor and friend Mary Wells.

By 1997 he was able to purchase his own building around the corner on Davie Street. It had originally functioned as a wholesale warehouse for local grocers, and if you look hard you can just make out some faded fruit paintings

high up on the façade. The Farmer’s Wife’s aesthetic that appeals to so

many customers is as much influenced by Garrett’s growing up in the country as by any artistic train-ing. Natural objects are combined with furniture, tools or architectural pieces from our agrarian past to make stylish vignettes. Even the workshop is tidy and prettily arranged. Four large white painted tin letters mounted high on the wall sum up Garrett’s philosophy — EDIT. “If the three most important words in real estate are location, location, location, the three most important words in design are edit, edit, edit,” Garrett says.

He explains how he began his business by selling dried flowers and fresh bouquets from peach baskets in front of the original Elm Street store just to draw in customers and liven up the place. “I’d go to the farmers’ market on Saturday mornings, get a handful of flowers and put them in the store so it wouldn’t be so stuffy,” says Garrett. “And people wanted to buy the flowers, and then they would want you to do something with the flowers for events or parties or whatever, and it sort of mushroomed.”

Longtime business associate Phillip Picket tells how they once brought in some sumac branches to liven up the monochromatic color scheme of the first

“You can take the farm boy off the farm, but you can’t get the dirt

from beneath his fingernails,”


shop. After he had arranged them nicely in a vase on an antique farm table, a lady stopped by to ask the price, but not of the table. She wanted the sumac arrange-ment, and so he gave it to her! They went back the next day and savaged the sumac bush to make another decoration, and when the same thing happened again with a different customer, the floral business was born.

They do not offer any kind of standard bouquet, preferring unique arrange-ments featuring high quality blossoms. Garrett doesn’t believe in using lots of filler plants to “cover up the lack of quality.” He often picks blooms or greenery from the charming pocket garden behind the shop, and Stacy contributes strange and won-derful natural objects found on her woodland rambles near her home in Climax.

When Garrett started the business in the ’80s, the country look was hot. “It was a little bit sentimental then as far as the kind of things people collected. It was what Grandma had and Victorian and yada yada,” says Garrett. Nowadays he goes for a cleaner look. “It’s not fussy; it’s sort of an honest, scrub-faced kind of look,” he says. “Homemade and simple lines and unornamented kind of things.”

But preparing ephemeral arrangements for people’s major life events is anything but simple. He has to depend on regular deliveries from wholesalers who buy from international markets, and he keeps a standing order for hydrangea blossoms, the mainstay of his floral designs.

“I prefer to buy local as much as I can,” he says. The freshest and best arrange-ments depend on flowers that are not tired and battered from being handled. “I hate flowers out of season,” he says. So if you really want peonies for your November wedding, The Farmer’s Wife might encourage you to postpone the event till May.

Many of their customers are men who “tend to not have a good vocabulary of flowers,” Garrett says. So a lot of them suggest he prepare them a dozen roses with a little baby’s breath on the side. Garrett usually persuades them to send something new and different. “And then I have the women come in and say, ‘Thank you, I’m so tired of that dozen red roses with the baby’s breath.’ Like boring, seen it before.”

I watch Stacy putting the finishing touches on a miniature garden in a wooden crate of moss and blooming hyacinth. She is carefully inserting delicate twigs with the spring leaves just barely beginning to unfurl, a Bradford pear finally making itself useful! A peek in the refrigerator reveals a preference for green Fuji mums, bells of Ireland and an extraordinary furry flower that looks like a Dr. Seuss truffala tree except chartreuse instead of bubblegum pink.

In other words, lots of green and white. “If I want color, I’ll eat a package of M&Ms,” says Garrett. Of course, there are some long-stemmed roses in bright colors, likely flown in from South America. But if I can’t resist buying a bunch to take home, I know not to ask for them with baby’s breath, dyed flowers or, worse yet, bows. “I don’t believe in bows,” says Garrett. OH


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“The world’s favorite season is the spring. All things seem possible in May.” ⁃ — Edwin Way Teale

wild woman in the GardenA few years ago in May, we had the privilege of taking Dame Mirabel Osler to

lunch in the beautiful Shropshire village she calls home. Osler, whose 1989 classic AGentlePleaforChaoshas been cited as a Bible of the cottage gardening crowd, promoted the idea of banishing restrictive procedures and allowing a garden to thrive on its own. It’s a delightful book hailed by one enthusisatic reviewer as “A blast of fresh air through the stuffy rooms of English gardening.” Here’s one of our favorite snippets from GentlePlea: “The very soul of a garden is shriveled by zealous regimentation. Off with their heads go the ferns, ladies’ mantle or Cranes’ bill. A mania for neatness, a lust for conformity

and away goes atmosphere and sensuality. What is left? Earth between plants . . . How rare to see a real cottage garden. It is far more difficult to achieve than a contrived garden. It requires intuition, a genius for letting things have their heads.” We couldn’t agree more with Dame Osler’s gentle plea for a little “more shambles here and there.” Well into her 80s, she showed us around her gloriously disordered garden with gusto and pas-sion, then marched us up the lane to her favorite village bistro where she polished off half a very fine bottle of Chardonnay and regaled us with charming stories of garden chaos. Our kind of gal. “A mild desire for amorphous confusion will gently infiltrate and, given time, one day will set the garden singing.” Must read-ing for anyone who loves reading and gardening with gusto.

A Perfectly named PlantWe happen to think the shrubby, herbacious peony, extant in nearly 300

varieties, might well be the most ideally named plant in the garden — and one of the most beautiful of late-spring bloomers, typically producing stunning, robust flowers in profusion as May’s end approaches. The name Paeonia comes from the root paeon, a hymn of praise to a helpful god, though Greek mythology holds the plant owes its name to a physician named Paeon, a healer who used this won-

drous plant for a variety of medicinal purposes. According to Homer, Paeon healed Hades after Hercules wounded him in the Trojan War. In the language of flowers, according to Bobby Ward,

the author of AContemplationonFlowers, peonies are

often associated with il-licit passions and even moon-fueled lunacy, the perfect flower for a moonlit tryst. Far Eastern culture values the peony as a symbol of national beauty and unity, of-ten featuring them

as symbols in public

and civic artwork.

if the Glove FitsWe love a garden product

that lives up to its billing. So it is with Foxgloves, the versatile golden glove that claims to be the world’s most comfortable glove for gardening. They were created by a landscape architect and serious garden-er, who used Supplex nylon and Lycra to create form-fitting gloves that provide superb protection for the skin without sacrificing dexter-ity and feel — “barehanded sensitivity” as they say in better potting, planting and weeding circles. These gems — which are ideal for biking and any other outdoor activity — come in a choice of elegant styles and colors ranging from the original to rugged work gloves, priced anywhere from $21 to $35. Better gardening stores now carry them, but you can also find a glove that fits your tastes from the company’s ever-expanding website: www.foxglovesinc.com. OH

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Month of wicked Little thoughtsAcross the Northern Hemisphere, the coming of May is greeted

as the true end of winter’s harshness and the beginning of the growing season, marked by days of lengthening light and productivity. The an-cient Greeks called it Maia after their goddess of fertility whose festival of drinking and eating and dancing commenced in May. Conversely, the Roman poet Ovid maintained that the true derivation of the name is the word “Maoires,” Latin for “elders,” and that the following month, June, was named for “iunniores” or “young people.” Whatever the truth, ancient Brits began using the name around 1430, in recogni-tion of the fact that rich green growths of meadow grass meant cows could be milked three times a day. In rural places across the British isles, country folk typically celebrated the coming of warmth with a fes-tival that included dancing around maypoles and pursuing other more adventurous pursuits. “Tra-la, it’s May, the lusty month of May,” trilled Julie Andrews in the 1960 Broadway production of Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe’s hit musical Camelot, “That lovely month when everyone goes blissfully astray / Tra-la, it’s here, that shocking time of year / When tons of wicked little thoughts merrily appear.”


Life & Home

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Life & Home

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MayyMyyyMyyyArts Calendar

May 1 – June 1

• NOT CHILDS’ PLAY. The Photography of Lewis Hine: Exposing Child Labor in North Carolina, 1908–1915. High Point Museum, 1859 East Lexington Avenue, High Point. Info: (336) 885-1859 or www.highpointmuseum.org.

May 1–5

• SHE COULD HAVE DANCED ALL NIGHT. Last chance to catch My Fair Lady at Triad Stage, 232 South Elm Street, Greensboro. Info: (336) 272-0160 or www.triadstage.org.

• MAY GHOSTS. Last fi ve days to see Diana Al-Hadid’s ghost-like, architectur-ally inspired sculpture and drawings at Weatherspoon Gallery, 500 Tate Street, Greensboro. Info: (336) 334-5770 or weath-erspoon.uncg.edu.

May 2

• MAYA’S NOTEBOOK. 7 p.m. Book-loving Bookmarks and the Salem College Center for Women Writers are bringing novelist Isabel Allende to Winston-Salem, to introduce her new book, Maya’s Notebook. After her only reading in North Carolina, Allende will be available to sign books in Hanes Auditorium on the Salem College campus, Winston-Salem. Tickets: 800-838-3006 orwww.bookmarksnc.org.

May 3

• IN THE ROUND. 7 p.m. Greensboro’s Van Dyke Dance Group has choreographed two dances so they can be performed in the round at the Green Hill Center for North Carolina Art, allowing viewers to walk around the space and see the dances from all four sides. The free event will feature Untitled Elegy, with music by Arvo Part, and then The Circle, danced to an original score by Greensboro musician Frank Vulpi. 200 North Davie Street, Greensboro. Info: (336) 370-4819 or www.danceproject.org.

May 4

• SHE TOTALLY MEANS TO DO THIS. 6:30 p.m. Jane Borden, O.Henry columnist, stand-up comedian and author of a memoir, I Totally Meant to Do That, will display what The New York Times called her “low brow brilliant” humor at The Friends of the Greensboro Public Library annual meeting, to be held at the Greensboro Historical Museum, 130 Summit Avenue, Greensboro. Tickets: (336) 373-2474 or www.friendsoft-hegreensborolibrary.org.

• SAUCY. 10 a.m. – 6 p.m. Some like it hot, some not. Whichever, come to a Boar & Castle sauce tasting at Artemis & the Scavengers, 106-A College Road, Greensboro, (336) 855-7959.

• FREE COMIC BOOK DAY. 10 a.m. – 2 p.m. Comic book illustrators will be sketching visitors at the Greensboro Science Center. Comic book fans of all ages get a bag of comics free for the asking. Greensboro Science Center, 4301 Lawndale Drive. Info: (336) 288.3769.

Key: •Art •Music/Concerts •Performing arts •Film •Literature/Speakers •Fun •History •Sports


May 1 – June 1

May 1–5

ALL NIGHT. Last chance to catch

May 2

Key: Key: •Art •Music/Concerts •Performing arts •Film •Literature/Speakers Art Music/Concerts Performing arts Film Literature/Speakers

My Fair Lady, May 1—5


MayArts Calendar

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State Street Shoppes

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Artist’s Reception with Gloria Coker on May 31st

Join Tyler White Gallery Friday, May 31st from 6–8 pm for a fun time with good friends, great art & meet Gloria Coker!

“Yellow Dress” by Gloria Coker, Exhibit Dates May 31st – June 31st

Lunch & Learn with Gloria on Friday, May 31st at 11:30am-1pm

Contact Kathy O’Brien at Tyler White Gallery to sign up 336.279.1124Or email: [email protected]

Our website www.tylerwhitegallery.com


State Street Shoppes

Come In and See Our Selection of Asian Arts and Curios – Old, New and Gently Loved

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• COPS+ROBBERS. 1:30 p.m. A “fun run” modeled after the children’s game

cops and robbers, with one team robbing and running, and the other team trying to pull their touch-football-style fl ags.

Corner of McGee and Greene streets. Info: (336) 510-9390 or www.thecopsan-

drobbersrun.com.

• SIDEWALK SALE. 10 a.m. – 4 p.m. At Aubrey Home, two dozen vendors normally

offer furniture, antiques, fabrics, consign-ment items and works from local artists. During

their semi-annual sidewalk sale, fi nd items that are discounted 75 percent, 3500 Battleground Road, Greensboro. Info: (336) 617-4275 or www.aubreyho-medesign.com.

• STAR WARS AND MORE. 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. Nathaniel Beversluis conducts the

Greensboro Symphony Orchestra per-forming the music of John Williams

as members of the Fighting 501st Legion and the Rebel Legion

don costumes as Star War characters at Westover

Church, 505 Muirs Chapel Road,

Greensboro. Tickets: (336)

335-5456, extension 224, Coliseum Box Offi ce, 1921 West Lee Street, Greensboro or www.greensborocoli-seum.com.

May 5

• IT’S BACK! 3 p.m. Dolley’s dress is back where it belongs after being ogled by countless tourists at the National Portrait Gallery. Exhibition Curator Susan Joyce Webster will tell you all about the newly preserved Madison carriage trunk and all the other stuff they’ve pulled out of their attic at the Greensboro Historical Museum, 130 Summit Avenue, Greensboro. Info: (336) 373-2043 or www.greensborohistory.org.

May 6

• GOING RED. 8:30 a.m. – 2:30 p.m. Guilford Go Red Educational Expo and Luncheon at the Koury Convention Center features a day of learning to improve your personal heart-health and enhance the health of your loved ones. Tickets: (336) 707-3134 or visit www.heart.org/guilfordncgoredluncheon.

May 9

• HOPPERS HERE. The Greensboro Grasshoppers are at home, NewBridge Bank Park, 408 Bellemeade Street, Greensboro. Tickets: (336) 268-2255.

• FIDDLE-O-VETSKIES. 7:30 p.m. Dmitry Sitovetsky, the Greensboro Symphony’s music director and violin soloist, does a double-take with his cousin,

May Arts Calendar

Key: •Art •Music/Concerts •Performing arts •Film •Literature/Speakers •Fun •History •SportsVan Dyke Dance Group, May 3


Life & Home

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Alexander Sitovetsky, performing Bach’s Double Concerto for Two Violins at War Memorial Auditorium, followed by Alexander tackling a Mendelssohn Violin Concerto, with Beethoven’s 10th Symphony as the fi -nale! Find out more about the latter by clicking on www.greensborosymphony.org. Tickets: (336) 335-5456, exten-sion 224, Coliseum Box Offi ce,1921 West Lee Street, Greensboro or www.greensborocoliseum.com.

May 10

• HOPPERS HERE. The Greensboro Grasshoppers are at home, NewBridge Bank Park, 408 Bellemeade Street, Greensboro. Tickets: (336) 268-2255

• COAL MINER’S DAUGHTER. 7:30 p.m. You’ve heard her recordings, seen the fi lm, maybe read her autobiogra-phy. Why not see Loretta Lynn live in Greensboro at War Memorial Auditorium for the

May Arts Calendar

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Old-world gas lanterns cast a welcoming glow here.

But what lies within Staffordshire Townhome

will delight you even more.

Visit our community during the Spring Parade

of Homes May 4th and 5th 1 to 5 p.m.

Enjoy the convenience of nearby shopping and

fine dining – always an easy drive to downtown

Greensboro and PTI Airport.

1814 New Garden Road, west of Battleground Ave.

Say hello to townhome living without saying

goodbye to the luxury you deserve.

Marketed by Powell & [email protected]

fi rst time since her sold-out concert here in 2011? Tickets: (336) 335-5456, extension 224, Coliseum Box Offi ce,1921 West Lee Street, Greensboro, or www.greensborocoliseum.com.

• S, S, S & S. 8 p.m. Violinist Alexander Sitkovetsk y plays Schumann, Shostakovich and Schubert in a Greensboro Symphony chamber concert at University of North Carolina at Greensboro’s School of Music Recital Hall, 100 McIver Street, Greensboro. Tickets: Coliseum Box Offi ce, 1921 West Lee Street, Greensboro, or www.greensborocoliseum.com.

May 11


• FIDDLE-O-VETSKIES II. 8 p.m. Dmitry Sitovetsky, the Greensboro Symphony’s music director and violin soloist, does a double-take with his cousin, Alexander Sitovetsky, performing Bach’s Double Concerto for Two Violins at Dana Auditorium, followed by Alexander tackling a Mendelssohn Violin Concerto, with Beethoven’s “10th” Symphony as the fi nale! To fi nd out more about the latter, click on www.greensborosym-phony.org. Tickets: Coliseum Box Offi ce, 1921 West Lee Street, Greensboro or www.greensborocoliseum.com.

• SWING DANCE 7:30–11:30 p.m. Introductory jitterbug lesson included with the price of admission at 7:30 p.m. followed by DJ dance to swing music. No part-ner or experience necessary. Vintage Theatre, 7 Vintage Avenue, Winston-Salem. Tickets: (336) 508-9998 or www.piedmontswingdance.org.

• CRAFTY. 10 a.m. – 6 p.m. Meet the talent behind the craft as they demonstrate how it’s done at Artemis & the Scavengers, 106-A College Road, Greensboro, (336) 855-7959.

May 12


• FREE TRICERASHOP GIFT. 9 a.m. – 5 p.m. Just for moms at the Greensboro Science Center gift shop on their very special day. Greensboro Science Center, 4301 Lawndale Drive.

May 13



May Arts Calendar



May Arts CalendarMay 14


• FIRE IN THE KITCHEN 6:30 p.m. Mike Harkenreader of the Undercurrent versus Wes Patterson of Southern Roots in an Iron-Chef-style competition during Fire in the in the Empire Room. Tickets: www.competitiondining.com.

May 15

• HOPPERS HERE. The Greensboro Grasshoppers are at home, NewBridge Bank Park, 408 Bellemeade

Street, Greensboro. Tickets: (336) 268-2255.

• FIRE IN THE KITCHEN. 6:30 p.m. Jared Keiper of Tavern in Old

Salem versus Gregory John of Greensboro Country Club in

an Iron-Chef-style competi-tion during Fire in the in the

Empire Room. Tickets: www.competitiondining.com.

May 16

• FIRE IN THE KITCHEN. Tim

Grandinetti of Spring House versus John Bobby of Nobles Grill in an Iron-Chef-style competition during Fire in the Empire Room. Tickets: www.competitiondining.com.

May 15–June 30

• SEEING THE SAVIOR. From Christ’s annunciation to his

second coming, an in-ternational team of thirteen

artists have imagined Christ’s birth, ministry, passion, ascension, and return to Earth in an exhibit that will be on display at First Baptist Church, 1000 West Friendly Avenue, Greensboro. Info: (336) 274-3286 or www.fbcgso.org.

May 18–19

• NOT OVER THE HILL. Ten College Hill residents will open their historic homes and private gardens during Preservation Greensboro’s annual Tour of Historic Homes. Tickets: 336-272-5003 or www.bland-wood.org.

May 18

• BLUE TO YOU. 1:30 p.m. For the 27th year, the Piedmont Blues Preservation Society is bringing us its Carolina Blues Festival with Janiva Magness and Kenny Neal as headliners at

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May Arts Calendar

Key: •Art •Music/Concerts •Per-forming arts •Film •Literature/Speakers •Fun •History •Sports

Festival Park in downtown Greensboro. Tickets: fest.piedmontblues.org.

• AKA WGOT. 3 – 5 p.m. The Writers Group of the Triad, active since the 1950s when it was known as the Greensboro Writers Club, will feature a reading and explication by Mark Smith-Soto at the Creative Center, 900 16th Street, Greensboro. Info: (336) 617-3328 or triadwriters.org.

• FASHION SHOW. 10 a.m. – 6 p.m. Whether upcycled or vintage, see the latest in fashion-forward (and -backward) designs at Artemis & the Scavengers, 106-A College Road, Greensboro, (336) 855-7959.

• LIVING HISTORY. 10 a.m. - 4 p.m. The clang of the blacksmith’s hammers will ring across High Point Historical Park, right next door to the High Point Museum. And if anyone gets hurt in the process, the Alexander’s Battalion Field Hospital Civil War re-enactors will be on hand to mend what’s busted. Info: 1859 East Lexington Avenue, High Point, (336) 885-1859 or highpointmuseum.org.

• GREEN GREENSBORO GALA. 7 p.m. “Black ties, blue jeans and everything in between” is the dress code for The Greensboro Children’s Museum’s Green Acres Gala fundraiser that will feature toe-tapping tunes and “spirited” fun. 220 North Church Street, Greensboro. (336) 574-2898 or www.gcmuseum.com.

• OUR KINDA PARTY. 7:30 p.m. Double-platinum country singer Jason Aldean rolls into town as part of his Night Train Tour at War Memorial Coliseum. Tickets: Coliseum Box Offi ce, 1921 West Lee Street, Greensboro or www.greensborocoliseum.com.

• LOVED BUT ENDANGERED. 11 a.m., 11:30 a.m., 1:30 p.m. and 2 p.m. Staff members who feed and care for the endangered species in Greensboro Science Center’s collection will speak about their favorite animals on Endangered Species Day. Info: 4301 Lawndale Drive.

• DOLLEY DAY. Noon until 4 p.m. To celebrate Dolley Madison’s dress coming back to town — and the birthday of the former fi rst lady and Guilford Country resident — join in ac-tivities and games at the Greensboro Historical Museum, 130 Summit Avenue, Greensboro. Info: (336) 373-2043 or www.greensborohistory.org.

Music/Concerts •Per-Literature/

History •Sports

Museum. And if anyone gets hurt in the process, the Alexander’s

be on hand to mend what’s

GREENSBORO GALA. 7 p.m. “Black ties, blue jeans and everything in between” is the dress code for The Greensboro Children’s Museum’s Green Acres Gala fundraiser that will feature toe-tapping tunes and “spirited” fun. 220 North Church Street, Greensboro. (336) 574-2898 or www.gcmuseum.com.

OUR KINDA PARTY. 7:30 p.m. Double-platinum country singer Jason

ENDANGERED. 11 a.m., 11:30 a.m., 1:30 p.m. and 2 p.m. Staff members who feed and care for the endangered species in Greensboro Science Center’s collection will speak about their favorite animals on Endangered Species Day. Info:

DOLLEY DAY. Noon until 4 p.m. To celebrate Dolley Madison’s dress coming back to town — and the birthday of the former fi rst lady and Guilford Country resident — join in ac-tivities and games at the Greensboro Historical Museum, 130 Summit Avenue, Greensboro. Info: (336) 373-2043 or www.


May Arts Calendar


Jeff Allen Landscape Arch itecture LLC

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Winston-Salem, North Carolina

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May 19

• POTENTIALLY MYSTERIOUS. 2 – 4 p.m. Want to know how to put romance in your mystery writing or mystery in your romance? Lynette Hall Hampton, author of fi fteen books, tells all for the Triad Sisters in Crime. High Point Library, 901 North Main Street, High Point,

(336) 883-3660.

May 20

• GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN. 10 a.m. Seven companies of infantry from Guilford County fought in the Battle of Gettysburg. Museum Assistant Director Matt Young will tell us all about it in a free presentation at the Greensboro Historical Museum, 130 Summit Avenue, Greensboro. Info: (336) 373-2043 or www.greensborohistory.org.

• FIRE IN THE KITCHEN. Kristina Fuller of Crafted versus Juan Guzman of J Peppers in an Iron-Chef-style competition during Fire in the in the Empire

Room. Tickets: www.competitiondining.com.

May 21

• FIRE IN THE KITCHEN. Mark Grohman of Meridian Restaurant versus John Vidovich of

Diamond Back Grill in an Iron-Chef-style competi-tion during Fire in the in the Empire Room. Tickets: www.competitiondining.com.

May 22

• IT’S BACK! Noon. Dolley’s dress is back where it belongs after being ogled by countless tourists at

the National Portrait Gallery. Exhibition Curator Susan Joyce Webster will tell you all about the newly

preserved Madison carriage trunk and all the other stuff they’ve pulled out of their attic at the Greensboro Historical Museum, 130 Summit Avenue, Greensboro. Info: (336) 373-2043 or www.tk.com.

• FIRE IN THE KITCHEN. Timothy Bochalis of Bistro B versus Chris Russell of B. Christopher’s in an Iron-Chef-style competition during Fire in the Empire Room. Tickets: www.competitiondining.com.

May 23


Key: •Film

May 20

• companies of infantry from Guilford County fought in • companies of infantry from Guilford County fought in • the Battle of Gettysburg. Museum Assistant Director Matt Young will tell us all about it in a free presentation at the Greensboro Historical Museum, 130 Summit Avenue, Greensboro. Info: (336) 373-2043 or www.greensborohistory.org.

• Crafted versus Juan Guzman of J Peppers in an Iron-• Crafted versus Juan Guzman of J Peppers in an Iron-• Chef-style competition during Fire in the in the Empire

tion during Fire in the in the Empire Room. Tickets: www.competitiondining.com.

May 22

• it belongs after being ogled by countless tourists at • it belongs after being ogled by countless tourists at • the National Portrait Gallery. Exhibition Curator Susan Joyce Webster will tell you all about the newly

preserved Madison carriage trunk and all the other stuff they’ve pulled out of their attic at the Greensboro Historical Museum, 130 Summit Avenue, Greensboro. Info: (336) 373-2043 or www.tk.com.

• Bistro B versus Chris Russell of B. Christopher’s in an • Bistro B versus Chris Russell of B. Christopher’s in an • Iron-Chef-style competition during Fire in the Empire Room. Tickets: www.competitiondining.com.

May 23

• are at home, NewBridge Bank Park, 408 Bellemeade • are at home, NewBridge Bank Park, 408 Bellemeade • Street, Greensboro. Tickets: (336) 268-2255.


May Arts Calendar


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May 24

• BEATLEMANIA. 7 p.m., 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. Music of the Beatles bouncing off the walls of OmniSphere Theater while lasers light up the 40-foot dome overhead. Tickets: 4301 Lawndale Drive.


May 25

• SWING DANCE. 7:30 – 11:30 p.m. Introductory jitterbug lesson included with the price of admission at 7:30 p.m., followed by dancing to live swing dance music with, yum, prime rib. No partner or experience necessary. Greensboro Shrine Club, 5010 High Point Road, Greensboro. Tickets: (336) 508-9998 or www.pied-montswingdance.org.

• SIDEWALK SALE. 10 a.m. – 6 p.m. It’s spring. Get outside and expand your wardrobe with something new and seasonally appropriate at Artemis & the Scavengers, 106-A College Road, Greensboro, (336) 855-7959.

• HOPPERS HERE. The Greensboro Grasshoppers are at home, NewBridge Bank Park, 408 Bellemeade


May 26


May 27

• MEMORIAL DAY THANKS. 9 a.m. – 5 p.m. Veterans, members of the military, police offi cers and fi re-fi ghters get half off at the Greensboro Science Center.

May 29

• FIRE IN THE KITCHEN. Tim Thompson of Marisol versus Travis Meyers of River Birch Lodge in an Iron-Chef-style competition during Fire in the in the Empire Room. Tickets: www.competition-dining.com.

May 30

• FIRE IN THE KITCHEN. Creighton McNeil of Liberty Oak versus Christian Froelich of WS Prime in an Iron-Chef-style competi-tion during Fire in the Empire Room.

Tickets: www.competitiondining.com.

• RUCKER & FRIENDS. 7:30 p.m. Darius Rucker, described as “a rich, twangy romper with a decidedly sunny vibe,” will take the stage with Justin Moore and Jana Kramer at White Oak Amphitheatre, Hanner


May 27

May 29

May 30

Fire in the Kitchen, starts May 15


May Arts Calendar


Street, Greensboro. Tickets: Coliseum Box Offi ce, 1921 West Lee Street, Greensboro or www.greensborocoli-seum.com.

May 31

• RARE BIRD ALERT. 8 p.m. Bluegrass banjo-ist and composer Steve Martin will pick and the audience will grin when he joins the Steep Canyon Rangers on the stage of War Memorial Coliseum. Tickets: Coliseum Box Offi ce, 1921 West Lee Street, Greensboro or www.greensborocoliseum.com.

WEEKLY HAPPENINGS

Tuesdays

• CHICKEN’N’PICKIN’. 6:30 – 9:30 p.m. Skillet Fried Chicken & Songs From a Southern Kitchen. Featuring Chef Jay’s skillet

fried chicken, select beverage specials and live music by Laurelyn Dossett and friends. Lucky 32 Southern Kitchen, 1421 Westover Terrace. Info: (336) 370-0707 or www.lucky32southernkitchen.com.

Wednesdays

• MUSSELS, WINE & MUSIC. 7 – 10 p.m. Mussels for $15, wines from $10 to $15 a bottle, live acoustic music by AM rodeo. Print Works Bistro, 702 Green Valley Road, Greensboro. Info: (336) 379-0699 or www.printworksbistro.com.

Thursdays

• JAZZ NIGHT. 7 p.m. Tate Street Coffee House, 334 Tate Street, Greensboro. Info: (336) 275-2754.

• OPEN MIC COMEDY AT THE IDIOT BOX. 9 p.m. Local pros and amateurs take the mic. Admission: $4 (includes one drink). Idiot Box, 348 South Elm Street, Greensboro. Info: (336) 274-2699 or www.ibcomedy.com.

Fridays & Saturdays

• IMPROV COMEDY. 10 p.m. (Friday and Saturday); 8 p.m. (Sat.). Actors create scenes on-the-spot and build upon the ideas of others. Performances based on sugges-tions given by the audience; each show is one-of-a-kind.

May 31

WEEKLY


Flowers, birds, and a fresh coat of paint . . .

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Saturday 8 p.m. show appropriate for the whole family. Idiot Box, 348 South Elm Street, Greensboro. Info/RSVP: 336-274-BOXX.

• NIGHTMARES AROUND ELM STREET. 8 p.m. A 90-minute historical candlelit ghost walking tour of Downtown Greensboro. Open year-round. Children 7 and under are free. Group rates and online discounts available. Tickets: www.carolinahistoryandhaunts.com/information.

Saturdays

• JAZZ IN THE A.M. 11 a.m. Featuring saxophonist Alex Smith and friends. Tate Street Coffee House, 334 Tate Street, Greensboro. Info: (336) 275-2754.

Saturdays & Sundays

• KATS: THE MEERKAT MUSICAL. 1 & 3 p.m. The Natural Science Center’s meerkats take center stage. Duration: 30 minutes. Natural Science Center of Greensboro, 4301 Lawndale Drive, Greensboro. Tickets: (336) 288-3769 or www.natsci.org.

Sundays

• LIVE MUSIC AT TATE STREET COFFEE. NC Hot Club with Rex Griffi n (11 a.m. – 1 p.m.) Irish Music (3 – 6 p.m.) Tate Street Coffee House, 334 Tate Street, Greensboro. Info: (336) 275-2754. OH

To add an event, email us at [email protected] by the fi rst of the month prior to the event.

May Arts Calendar


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Friday, April 5, 2013Photographs by Sam Froelich


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Back: Emily Burton, Nyla Edwards, Josh Cook

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GreenScene CTG’s Youth Theatre production of Disney’s The Little Mermaid, Jr.

at The Broach Theatre on Saturday, April 13, 2013Photographs by Sam Froelich

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Jim, Jay, & Michelle Daniel

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Chesney White, Jamie Simmons, Katie Durst

Megan Roberts, Cassidy Smith, Laura Johnson

GreenSceneUNCG versus Appalachian State

baseball game at UNCGSunday, April 14, 2013

Photographs by Sam Froelich

Caleb Thurman, Kristen Creed, Meghan Mchone

Shaun Williams, Robyn Mulhern


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Command Performance at The Carolina Theatre Thursday, April 18, 2013Photographs by Sam Froelich

Sam & Anne Hummel

VISIT GREENSBORO PARKS & RECREATIONONLINE AND CLICK ON SUMMER CAMPS!

www.greensboro-nc.gov/leisure

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City Arts: Dance, Drama, Music, Arts,Caldcleugh Multicultural Arts Center

Greensboro SportsplexBasketball, volleyball, roller hockey,soccer, sports, fitness and more!

Enjoy neighborhood playgrounds,city pools and spraygrounds!

Recreation Center Day CampsJune 10 – August 9 (ages 5-12)

7:30 am-6 pm, Monday-Friday

Registration ongoing, now until full!

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Antiques, Vintage & Collectibles

Treasures Antiques Consignments


By Astrid stellAnovA

Taurus (April 21-May 21)Stubborn don’t even begin to describe it. But you are one clever beast, Darlin’, and right now hotter than a sun spot after making that love connection last month. You are about to flame like a solar spot and

I’m thinking the rest of us might get torched. The last half of the month is yours, Baby. There’s gonna be more energy radiating off you than a shot of Red Bull! Mid-month, you are bedazzled by gawd-knows-what in conjunction. That’s time to pull in your horns and get in touch with your sensitive side. What can I say? Some days you ride the bull and some days you get ridden.

Gemini (May 22-June 21)You got more moves than an Amway dealer — but what on earth has got ahold of you now? One day you are strutting your stuff on center stage, and the next day, sitting in your bedroom alone. Ordering out

cheeseburgers like Howard Hughes in Vegas. Chill, Child. And I don’t care what that slick operator told you — a lot at Lake Lure right where they filmed Dirty Dancing ain’t now, ain’t ever, going to get liquidated for only $99.95 a month with no money down. And mind your sassy tongue from the 19th till the 22nd. You got a lot to say but we just ain’t in the mood, Chile.

Cancer (June 22-July 23)Lawd, it’s just one thing after another by the 9th. It’s a great big world, but I wouldn’t want to paint it, either. Ain’t no wonder you feeling all give out, stuck in some kinda rerun. Feeling like you’re the Karate Kid

with that paintbrush in Mr. Miyagi’s backyard. (“Show me, ‘paint the fence!’”) This ain’t going to last, so pick up the brush and get on with it, up, down, up, down. I swear, Sweet Pea, it gets better after the 25th when Mars and Mercury slide on into home plate. Use them karate moves — where you be like a tree and stay grounded — and you won’t get knocked out.

Leo (July 23-Aug. 23)You just thought last month was tough. You got a whole lotta hurting going on, and karma is tricky, ain’t she? Learn anything? If you weren’t so dang smart, not to mention contentious, you might a quit on us.

But no. You already found an escape hatch, and you got one foot on the ladder and one on the wall. There’s some tricky business ahead but there’s more roar in the ole Leo yet. Be patient. By the 11th Mercury and the Sun give you a little breather. Take your time, Kitty Kat, and pull in those fangs. Purrs get more pets than roars.

Virgo (August 24-Sept. 23)Lordamercy, I used to date a Virgo, and he was a crazy flirt. Trouble was when he flirted with insurance fraud and wound up doing 5-10 for torching his trailer. He melted the siding right off mine, which was

way too close to his pad. You got charm oozing outta every pore, but you get a little stuck in your ways. This can make others (moi, for example) confused try-ing to figure you out. When the dust settles down after the 18th, you’ll remind every single one of us that you got a level head on you. By the 27th, show us you know how to use it, Darlin’.

Libra (Sept. 24-Oct. 23)Nobody ever said Libras were dumb. They just plumb wear our little butts out — nobody beats a Libra at the waiting and cogitating game. But go on, put on your radical pants and bust a move, Baby, cause this

is your month for love connections and all kind of happiness conjunctions. You might want to kick that old love interest to the curb if you ain’t getting what you need. You gotta move off the wall and get in the passing lane if you want the vic-tory flag to drop, Dumpling, and this is the time. Pssstttt: On the 28th it is your race to lose, you sweet freak!

Scorpio (October 23-November 21)Listen, you gotta put on your walking shoes and stop digging in — go with the flow, why don’t you? Saturn and Mars got you all uptight. Somebody who gives a crap has got your best interests at heart, so

how about meeting a body halfway? Winning ain’t the only thing, Honey; even if you spend the first half of the month fighting that losing battle. By the 16th you got some options opening up. Maybe you can try it — you might like it. Hey, nobody said you gotta jump on the sofa and go all Tom Cruise on Oprah on us. But give and take, Child.

Sagittarius (Nov. 23-Dec. 21)Looking at the star chart, I’m thinking you might wanna see if you can get a spin of the wheel on my favorite TV show, Wheel of Fortune. That Vanna is an inspiration to hairdressers everywhere. Honey, I

see you got two big influences colliding — your dazzling ways and gift of gab — thanks to Mercury’s conjunction with Jupiter late this month. Throw in that wit, and spin the wheel. And if you don’t get on the wheel, get behind one! Drive yourself to a new love connection on match.com. Lordamercy, come May 20, love is coming right straight at you!

Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 20)Shut the front door! Mars and Saturn are in the house and it may leave you flat out pissed off at the start of the month. But you been having more flashbacks than Bobby Ewing lately, and by the time

you get past week one, I gotta give you a little heads up. Listen here: Do yourself a favor and snap outta it. Reality isn’t just a TV show, honey. Keep your cool, and by the time the midmonth hits, you got a change coming. That’s right. Things get all shook up before May is done, and listen here: Ch-ch-changes can be mighty, mighty nice.

Aquarius (Jan. 21-Feb. 19)Ain’t no mountain high enough, huh? Wellll . . . you got your knick-ers in a knot, didn’t you, overcommitting your bad self? Shift it in reverse, if you have to, and get outta that corner, Baby, cause, well,

nobody puts Baby in the corner. Then, look to the wide open road, and put the top down, and enjoy the breeze. You are sometimes like a Thelma without Louise, going it alone, but there is no reason to drive off the cliff just when things are looking very, very interesting. I’m just saying. Yin and yang, Baby Cakes. And pack some Aqua Net for the highway.

Pisces (Feb. 20-March 20)Slow and steady. One day at a time. Let go, just like we say in AA meetings. You got some transitions going on in the chart. You think you need to give everybody a peace of your mind this month. Uh,

NO. Take your own inventory, just like my AA sponsor says, and by the second week things will look a lot different and you’ll be glad you kept your peace. And swallowed it, too. This is a stop-and- smell-the-roses-but-don’t-buy-any kinda month until the last week. From the 27th on, Honey, if you get a good idea from your fortune cookie, go for it!

Aries (March 21-April 20)Who gets a thank-you card from Michael Kors? Back away from the plastic, my favorite shopaholic, cause this month you gotta work hard for the money and pay it off. Start off disciplined with a capital

“D.” Then, by the 20th you gonna see the best thing you can do is keep on keep-ing on, steady like. Nobody said it was easy being a Ram, but tuck your head down. C-H-I-L-L. You gotta keep things loose, cause come the 26th, you gotta tack faster than a sailboat in hurricane Sandy. If anybody can handle change, Sweet Thang, you can. OH

After a necessary hiatus to attend to unfortunate personal business, Astrid Stellanova is back and all is right with the universe.

The Accidental Astrologer


O.Henry Ending

The Golf BallA final Mother’s Day message

By HArry BlAir

Before she died, my mother told me that when her time came, she wanted to be cremated. She also wanted me to take her and my father’s ashes, which had been in the ground at Westminster Gardens since 1979, down to Carolina Beach. They had lived there when they first married in 1943. My father helped build Liberty ships at the Wilmington Ship-yards. Two years later, their first child was born — me. Six days after that, the Ger-mans surrendered. In three months, the war was over. My mother said those were the happiest years of their life.

She passed in September 2005, and it fell to my sister, Jane, and me to plan a trip to Carolina Beach. I felt a need to honor our mother’s wishes as soon as possible, but weeks passed before either of us could plan our “duty” trip. By then, it was November, a busy time for everybody. We tried to coordinate a weekend trip, but it was impossible. When I could go, she couldn’t. And when she could go, I was tied up. And so, weeks turned into months with two black boxes of ashes on my chest-of-draw-ers. They were a daily reminder of my, well, our ineptitude. Christmas came and went, and 2006 started cold and dark. I think then, neither of us felt like leaving our houses, much less driving down to the coast.

But the black boxes wouldn’t let me forget what

I needed to do. And so with renewed purpose, Jane and I tried, in vain, to set a date. Spring came to Greensboro and with it, a blue funk. The boxes reminded me daily of my failure and my mother’s disappointment. And if I knew one thing, it was that Southern men do not disappoint their mommas. I was desperate.

Mother’s Day, my first without my mom, found me on the golf course. It was a brilliant sunny day, and Greensboro National was gorgeous. The sixth hole is a par-5, uphill dogleg left with a swamp in front of the tee box and thick woods to the right. I hit my drive safely up the middle, but my partner hit a vicious slice deep into the woods. We parked on the cart path and I followed Bill into the trees to help him find his ball. Thirty or forty yards in, I

spotted a ball in plain view, resting atop an ancient rotting tree trunk. I walked over and picked it up. Without looking

at it, I threw it over to him and asked, “Is this your ball?” “Nope,” he said and tossed it back. I looked

at the ball to see if it was any good, hoping for a Titleist or Bridgestone. The hair on my arms

stood up as I saw the word “MOM.” I nearly dropped the ball. When I turned the ball over, I saw a scuffed sailfish and the words “Carolina Beach.”

I didn’t finish the round that day, instead driving home and immediately calling my

sister. I said I was going to the beach the follow-ing weekend, with or without her. So by myself, I emptied the boxes at Carolina Beach on that early, still Saturday morning. I’ll never forget how beauti-ful those ashes looked sinking into the clear, green

water. And I’ll never forget how good I felt. I called Jane when it was done and we both cried a little bit.

Oh, and I keep that golf ball in a little velvet pouch in my golf bag. It’s pretty special. OH

Harry Blair, who regularly does illustrations for O.Henry magazine, draws and writes from his home in Greensboro.

Illu

stra

tIo

n by

Har

ry b

laIr

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0912-00121 09/2012

Thanks to Carolina Bank,I was able to start

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May 2013 O.Henry