Jane in her sunroom.
Beauty Grows Here
A
United Methodist Retirement Community
S A LONGTIME AND AVID GARDENER, Jane loves the picturesque natural splendor that helps make Arbor Acres alive with beauty. But you’ll more likely find her planting and tending flowers than simply enjoying them. “I like getting my hands in the dirt. For me, working in a garden is as satisfying as the blooms.” At Arbor Acres, along with unparalleled comfort and security, our residents celebrate the endless variations and possibilities of beauty.
What is beautiful to you?
www.arboracres.org 1240 Arbor Road, Winston-Salem, NC 27104 336 -724-7921
GREENSBORO 225 South Elm Street • 336-272-5146 WINSTON-SALEM Stratford Village 137 South Stratford Road • 336-725-1911 www.schiffmans.com
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7 From the Editor
By Jim Dodson
10 Top Ten
65
By Annie Ferguson
STYLEBOOK 13 Shop Talk
By Nancy Oakley
17 Poem
By Bob Wickless
19 Gardener’s Notebook
By Noah Salt
24 Spring Almanac
By Ash Alder
26 Spirits
50
40 FEATURES
39 Poem 40 Rock Solid
By Nancy Oakley
D.I.Y. details complement a log cabin kit on High Rock Lake
50 The Tree Doctor
By Ross Howell Jr
Malcolm Brown’s private arboretum in Winston-Salem
56 A Slice of Burgundy in Stoney Creek
By Cynthia Adams
A mural for Francophiles
60 When Wood Speaks
By Maria Johnson
One woman’s new chapter in life
72 Brunch in a Barn
By Jim Dodson
Four chefs and 20 friends celebrate spring
By Tony Cross
29 Designing Women
By Nancy Oakley
32 The Architect’s Son
By Peter Freeman
35 The Serial Eater
By Jim Dodson
How Greensboro’s Ted Keaton brings old furniture to life
64 Barn Again
LIFE&HOME 77 The Language of Home
By Noah Salt
78 Our Towns
By Leah Hughes
80 HomeWords
By David Claude Bailey
Cover Photograph by Amy Freeman 2 Seasons •
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Spring 2017
Art for Eyes | Eye for Arts Fine Eyewear, Artwork and Jewelry 327 South Elm | Greensboro 336.274.1278 | TheViewOnElm.com Becky Causey, Licensed Optician Find us on Facebook
Vol. 2 No. 1 336.617.0090 1848 Banking Street, Greensboro, NC 27408 www.ohenrymag.com Jim Dodson, Editor • jim@thepilot.com Andie Rose, Art Director • andie@thepilot.com Nancy Oakley, Senior Editor • nancy@ohenrymag.com Lauren Coffey, Graphic Designer Alyssa Rocherolle, Graphic Designer Contributors Cynthia Adams, Ash Alder, David Claude Bailey, Harry Blair, Tony Cross, Annie Ferguson, Amy Freeman, Peter Freeman, Sam Froelich, Ross Howell Jr., Leah Hughes, Maria Johnson, Romey Petite, Noah Salt, Bert VanderVeen, Bob Wickless
h David Woronoff, Publisher Advertising Sales Ginny Trigg, Sales Director 910.691.8293, ginny@thepilot.com Lisa Bobbitt, Sales Assistant 336.617.0090, ohenryadvertising@gmail.com Brad Beard, Graphic Design Hattie Aderholdt, 336.601.1188 • hattie@ohenrymag.com Lisa Allen, 336.210.6921 • lisa@ohenrymag.com Amy Grove, 336.456.0827 • amy@ohenrymag.com Jaime Wortman, 336.707.3461 • jaime@ohenrymag.com Circulation Darlene Stark, Circulation Director 910.693.2488 Subscriptions 336.617.0090 ©Copyright 2017. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited. Seasons Magazine is published by The Pilot LLC
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S P E C I A L S AV I N G S GOING ON NOW
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Ask a designer or visit ethanallen.com for details. Sale going on for a limited time. Š2017 Ethan Allen Global, Inc.
From the Editor
What’s Old Is New By Jim Dodson
IllustraTion by Harry Blair
F
unny how a new house can whisper in your ear, almost like in a dream. In our case, the house we purchased in Greensboro’s Old Starmount neighborhood last fall, a handsome brick and wooden bungalow, is new only in a manner of speaking. The house was actually built in 1951, meant to be the dream home of a skilled builder named Al Corry, his wife, Merle, and their four kids. After a full year of checking out houses from Greensboro’s historic Fisher Park to Winston-Salem’s venerable West End, not to mention exploratory trips across the dairylands of southern Alamance County and gentrified fields of northern Guilford, it seems as if by the sweet hand of Providence we wound up buying a house that sits just two doors down from the one where I grew up in Starmount Forest. The Corry boys were my childhood pals, and the house of Big Al and Mama Merle was, in fact, my favorite in the neighborhood. To briefly review, when I heard from a friend that my boyhood home on Dogwood Drive was up for sale, out of equal parts curiosity and simple nostalgia, I decided to go investigate late one summer afternoon. In my heart I knew that buying a family home that held so many precious memories — not to mention now needed a ton of work and possibly a complete overhaul — made buying it more or less out of the question. But as I sat out front just looking at the place, hearing sweet whispers of the past, I thought how cool it would be if we could indeed find a similar old house in Starmount to live out the rest of our days — a great kitchen for my wife, Wendy, and a nice big yard the resident gardener could restore and transform over the years. Wendy, after all, had recently stated her preference for approaching Starmount Forest, noting the charm of the houses and the slightly larger yards. At the end of my little reverie, as I drove on, I saw a “For Sale” sign in front of the Corry house and couldn’t believe my eyes. I knew Mama Merle had recently passed on and that eldest son Chris — also a talented builder — had been taking care of the place. But I was surprised and delighted to see it up for sale. I pulled into the driveway and took a peek through the carport kitchen door. The kitchen was almost as I remembered it, though it had been seriously updated. A week later, after church one Sunday, we dropped by for an afternoon showing. As Wendy wandered off through the empty rooms, I just stood in the handsomely refreshed kitchen. Spring 2017
“Don’t you want to go look around?” asked Vickie, the real estate agent. “Don’t need to,” I quipped. “I know just about every room of this house.” She laughed out loud when I mentioned that the owners had been among my parents’ best chums, that I grew up just two doors away and knew basically every room in the place. Equally important, I also knew it was extremely well-built. The only surprise was that it had been on the market for almost four months — a rarity in that neighborhood. I asked her why she thought that was. She mentioned the original parquet flooring, the thick, pink, wall-to-wall carpeting of the large living room with its paneled walls of hand-cut yellow juniper. There was also the exotic foyer wallpaper that looked like Carmen Miranda’s picture of paradise . . . the work of iconic Greensboro designer Otto Zenke. “I think the house feels very dated to the younger couples who’ve come through it. They seem to want shiny, bright and soaring,” Vickie explained. “This house is just waiting for the right people who realize what they are looking at. It will speak to them,” she added. “Yes,” I agreed, neglecting to point out that the house was dang-near shouting my name as I stood there trying to act the cool and savvy customer and — as she later recounted with amusement — “kind of poker-faced.” That’s because I was still in a kind of disbelief that the house I’d admired since I was knee-high to a yardman had sat empty for so long. A week later, we went back for a second look. Without my noticing, my bride slipped Vickie her phone number, taking the matter in hand entirely, and asked to be alerted if anyone else made a move on the property. On the way back to the Sandhills, Wendy quietly observed, “I think that’s the house for us.” No moss grows beneath her feet. Within three weeks, she’d made it happen. I’m still pinching myself. From our first night in the place, the house felt like the home that had just been waiting for us to show up. As if to confirm Wendy’s intuition, all four of the far-flung Corry siblings quickly got in touch to express their keen plea-
She laughed out loud when I mentioned that the owners had been among my parents’ best chums, that I grew up just two doors away . . .
Seasons • Style & Design 7
Congratulations to our 2016 Top Performers C H A I R M A N ’ S C I R C L E P L AT I N U M
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Spring 2017
sure that their family home had passed into the hands of a family that knew and loved the place almost from the day it was built, and planned to take it lovingly into a next phase of life. What that means exactly remains to be determined. Part of the pleasure of updating something as aged but splendidly built as the Corry house is a sweet balancing act between the charms of the past and the needs of the present, a synergy involving character and creativity, knowing what must be preserved and what should be gently renewed. Mama Merle’s kitchen had been gorgeously redone with new marble counters, sleek German appliances and elegant track lighting. But much of the rest of the house remained original and in nearly mint condition, revealing the timeless craftsmanship of the visionary who built it. As long as I’m in residence, Big Al’s original oversized Andersen windows, which operate on very cool midcentury runners — quite revolutionary for their day in 1950s, won’t be switched out anytime soon, and Mama Merle’s gorgeous parquet wooden floors are like works of art underfoot. As eldest son Chris Corry assured would be the case, when we yanked up the dusty pink wall-to-wall carpet that had been in place since the Reagan years, we did indeed find gorgeous hardwood floors that needed only a few bits of sanding and an application of tung oil to gleam like the day they were laid. True, a designer friend almost fainted in disbelief when she learned that, after much debate, we decided to paint over the original Otto Zenke paper with an elegant paint called “Ancient Ivory” in order to lighten up the living room and give the larger rooms even greater sense of flow — not to mention a great place for original pieces of artwork we’ve collected over the decades. The results are even better than we’d envisioned. There is other updated painting to come, including the outside of the house, where we’re contemplating a darker shade of moss green that will nicely contrast the ambitious front garden of Japanese maples and perennial gardens I have plotted out in my little old gardener’s brain and actually began working on before Christmas. An updated landscape that reveals and frames this lovely old place will eventually replace elderly azaleas, and leggy boxwoods and oversized holly shrubs that have overwhelmed the front and eastern flank of the house. Part of the pleasure of occupying a house you know and love — and expect to live in as long as you draw breath — is the fact that there is no rush to make big changes. There is time to inhale its spiritual essence and meditate on what such a living space itself desires for its next phase of life. An oblong room off the small dining room that leads to the large screened porch in the rear, for example, begs for some kind of thoughtful renovation. That was Mama Merle’s personal den, complete with a smaller fireplace. But our first thought was to make it our dining room with an expanded hearth, new wooden flooring and maybe a woodstove to recall our post-and-beam house in Maine. On the other hand, after living here for several months, my wife decided what a perfect place for the custom-built bookshelves of a true library, and a perfect spot for her own long-desired home office. The beautiful antique desk I gave her for Christmas, I think, sealed the deal. Out back, my first thought was to take down Big Al’s peeling pergola over the tidy brick terrace. This turned out to be a good decision. With the pergola gone, the little terrace beathes with new charm, and a closeness to nature. Already, beneath century-old oaks, I’ve begun clearing out overgrown bushes in order to create the traditional Japanese shade garden I fully expect to be happily still working on for years. Thus, as another glorious Piedmont springtime breaks over the horizon, the Corry place is whispering to us in the nicest way possible. It’s telling us to take our time and simply enjoy being here, to have fun imagining the possibilities, to live well and love deep. It’s telling us, at last, welcome home. h Spring 2017
Seasons • Style & Design 9
Top Ten
Flowers, furnishings, fine art and architecture abound in this spring’s events By Annie Ferguson
1| Southern Ideal Home Show
Browse exhibitors and learn about trends in interior design, building and home improvement, plus green living, kitchen and bath, landscaping and more in this comprehensive home show. Plus, there’s food and wine to sample — and buy — as you consider destinations with travel exhibitors. Tickets: $7 at local Walgreens stores, $9 online, $10 at the door. March 24–27. Greensboro Coliseum Complex, 1921 West Gate City Boulevard, Greensboro. (704) 376-6594 southernshows.com/hsg
2| Recycled for the Sake of Art View works of art created from recycled materials, such as an assemblage of post-consumer materials made into the likeness of Marilyn Monroe by artist Kirkland Smith. The works of Miles Purvis, Bryant Holsenbeck and Catherine Edgerton will also be on display. Free and open to the public through April 1. Theatre Art Galleries, 220 East Commerce Ave., High Point. (336) 887-2137 or tagart.org/exhibitions/upcoming-exhibits/
5| High Point Market
4| Easter Festival
Go Dutch at Paul J. Ciener Botanical Garden’s annual tulip celebration and enjoy the colorful splendor of 24,000 tulip bulbs in bloom. Light refreshments will be served. Free and open to the public. April 8, 2–4 p.m., Paul J. Ciener Botanical Garden, 215 South Main St., Kernersville. (336) 996-7888 or www.cienerbotanicalgarden.org
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Experience Easter the way it’s celebrated in traditional Moravian homes when you visit Old Salem. Hunt for, and decorate, eggs, see a demonstration of egg dyeing with natural dyes, listen to hymns on the Tannenberg Organ in the Single Brothers’ House Saal, and hear a reading of Easter Maus. Activities are included with an All-In-One ticket. April 15, Old Salem Museum & Gardens, 900 Old Salem Road, Winston-Salem. (336) 721-7300 or www.oldsalem.org
Marilyn, Assemblage, 51” x 51”
3| Spectacular Spring Tulip Bloom
As the largest furnishings industry trade show in the world, this semiannual event brings approximately 75,000 people from around the globe to High Point. Open to industry professionals. April 22–26. 164 South Main St., High Point. (336) 869-1000 or www.highpointmarket.org
Spring 2017
7| Seventh Annual Tour of Historic Homes and Gardens
For local history and design buffs, this annual event is a must-do. Vintage homes in the Fisher Park neighborhood will open for tours in May as part of National Historic Preservation Month. The tour will highlight stunning features of early 20th century architecture. Participants gain insights into the city’s past through design and horticulture practices. 713 North Greene St., Fisher Park, Greensboro. May 20–21. (336) 272-5003, Tickets: $15–$25 at preservationgreensboro.org/ tour-of-historic-homes-gardens/
6| Groovin’ in the Garden
Get jazzed for an afternoon of live musical performances on two stages in one of Greensboro’s newest gardens. Other features include musical activities for children, Garden Quest, plus food vendors and trucks. April 30. Noon–5 p.m., Gateway Gardens, 2924 East Gate City Boulevard, Greensboro. www.greensborobeautiful.org
8| Concert on the Lawn Featuring Balsam Range
Hear the bluegrass stylings of Balsam Range, where the Great Smoky Mountains meet the Blue Ridge Mountains, at Kernersville’s Paul J. Ciener Botanical Garden. As you listen, enjoy food and beverages for purchase from food trucks. Tickets are $15 and proceeds benefit further development of this beloved Triad oasis. June 1, 6:30–8 p.m., Paul J. Ciener Botanical Garden, 215 South Main St., Kernersville. (336) 996-7888 or www.cienerbotanicalgarden.org
Photographs provided by Greensboro beautifuL
10| Parisian Promenade Samuel F. B. Morse. Gallery of the Louvre, 1831–33. Oil on canvas. Frame: 88 3/4 x 123 in. (225.4 x 312.4 cm) Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection. 1992.51
9| Samuel F.B. Morse’s “Gallery of the Louvre” and the Art of Invention
Imitation really is the sincerest form of flattery. Take this large painting of the famed Salon Carré in the Musée du Louvre, for example. Samuel F.B. Morse spent months selecting paintings for his composition and painstakingly copying them for American viewers who did not have access to such art. When he returned to the United States in 1832, Morse conceived the idea for the telegraph machine. See the Louvre painting with works by old masters, as well as early telegraph machines. Through June 4, Reynolda House Museum of American Art, 2250 Reynolda Road, Winston-Salem. (336) 758-5150 www.reynoldahouse.org Spring 2017
Who doesn’t love Paris in the springtime? Soak in the sights, sounds and smells of the City of Lights this season without leaving Greensboro. Enjoy sidewalk artists, live music, children’s activities, family games, sidewalk cafes, a poodle parade and more amid a garden in bloom. June 4, Noon–5 p.m., Tanger Family Bicentennial Garden, 1105 Hobbs Road, Greensboro. www.greensborobeautiful.org h
Seasons • Style & Design 11
Looking for imaging professionals you can trust? Look where you live.
You don’t have to go far to find highly skilled specialists for your imaging needs. They’re here in the Triad. Our local radiologists and staff have dedicated their lives to providing quality, compassionate care and fast, accurate results. You get to choose who serves your imaging needs. So if your doctor recommends an MRI, a diagnostic X-ray, lung screening CT or another imaging procedure, request Greensboro Imaging. greensboroimaging.com • 336.433.5000
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StyleBook shop talk
The Essential Bunny Williams
The ubiquitous design maven shares some thoughts on true Southern style By Nancy Oakley
M
ention the name Bunny Williams to devotees of interior design, and you can practically expect them to start genuflecting, given the New York designer’s storied accomplishments: her 22-year apprenticeship at the legendary firm Parish-Hadley; longtime co-ownership, with husband and antiques dealer John Roselli of the Manhattan garden boutique Treillage; various product lines through Ballard Designs, among others; and author of several books, including the popular An Affair with a House (Harry N. Abrams, 2005), which chronicles the restoration of her and Roselli’s Federalstyle Connecticut home. A native of Charlottesville, Virginia, Williams owes much of her aesthetic to her Southern roots. In May, along with Atlanta designer Miles Redd, and former design editor of Architectural Digest Howard Christian, Williams will discuss Southern design at the Spring Design Symposium on May 6 at the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts (MESDA) in Winston-Salem. She took the time to chat with Seasons about her views on the region’s style, her love of old houses and their place in 21st-century design. SEASONS: Is there such a thing as Southern style and design anymore? Or has the plethora of visual tools — HGTV and Pinterest, for instance — diluted regional style? BW: I would say that decorating is not fashion. Decorating is something that people develop over a period of time. You know, you can buy a dress and it can go out of style next year, and it’s not the end of the world. A good house and a good home, even if you move, is a style one develops, and adds to. And it gets richer as time goes on. So when I think of Southern style, to me, the whole reason I got into this business is, Southerners still love to entertain. They open their doors, they love people in their houses. I still think of Southerners as having a cocktail buffet or having a picnic in the backyard . . . they like to get together. They’re a sociable group of people. SEASONS: How does this translate into how we decorate our homes? BW: All this begins to affect the style of decorating — whether Spring 2017
you want a red room or a white room, or whether you want modern furniture or traditional furniture — what you find in Southern houses is this sense of welcoming, because I think Southerners use their houses. I also think that for most of us who grew up in the South, there is a sense of history. Not everybody that’s living in the South is from the South. But if you did grow up there and you have a Southern family, there’s always nostalgia talk: “Oh! This was your grandmother’s,” or, “We did this.” SEASONS: Does that extend to the current generation? BW: Even though a lot of young people say, “I don’t want this anymore,” they’re going to come back and remember the story that related to their family, or related to something their mother bought when she went on a trip. Memories and history mean something to Southerners. But it’s also warm. A warm connection you have to something. And you may not like it. It’s not that you should take something you don’t like, but I use my mother’s Blue Luster teacups and I love them. And I love the fact that she had them. And no matter how you live, I think that tradition and hospitality, and caring and kindness, influence the design in the South. SEASONS: Speaking of younger people, the millennial generation stands to inherit a lot of antiques. How do you teach them the value of these things? BW: I don’t know that you do. I think gardening and maintaining a house take care. And love. And I think the problem is, a lot of millennials, everything is fast for them. It’s the internet, it’s being connected. I’m not sure they really want to go out and spend three hours with the birds gardening. I do. I can’t wait to Seasons • Style & Design 13
1549 SquiRE DaviS ROaD
24 Elm RiDGE laNE
30 acre horse farm located off Sandy Ridge Road
On the water in elegant 2600 North Elm community. 4 bed, 5000 sq ft home, pool, gazebo, 10 stall morton barn + 4 1/2 baths with master on main level. Den, game room, 5 stall barn, indoor arena, log cabin, shop bldg, fenced kitchenette & office on lower level. Gourmet kitchen. pastures. Call agent for more details.
$724,900
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$342,900
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StyleBook go out in the garden. That is my solace. I want to be disconnected. I don’t want to be near the phone. I want somebody to not be able to get in touch with me. That’s very hard for young people. I always say to them: “You know what? This old chair is going to look better in twenty years than that thing you bought from Crate & Barrel that’s not going to look so good in five years.” But I think what they want in their lives is something that can be swept out. They’re not particularly caring about housekeeping or vacuuming. Nobody wants silver, because they don’t want to polish it. SEASONS: Something that makes us want to cry! BW: Oh, tell me! But I say, “If you use your silver every day, you don’t have to polish it.” It’s just if you don’t ever touch it. But you can’t give away silver. To me, polishing silver is sort of therapeutic. It’s sort of, “Oh! Doesn’t this look pretty?!” But I don’t want to be on my iPhone all the time, and actually, I don’t like to watch a lot of television. The next generation is completely geared into every channel you can get, downloading this, emailing, texting . . . and I think they’ve become addicted to these apparatuses that make it almost impossible for them to do something that’s solitary. SEASONS: How does that affect you, if you’re working with younger clients? And they’ve got every app and they’ve looked at a zillion pictures on Pinterest or Instagram? BW: I have to say, the younger clients are a lot more knowledgeable. They have looked at a lot. A lot of clients come to me because things looks sterile. They’re not coming to me to get something from Crate & Barrel. And they want it — I call it cleaner. They don’t want fancy curtains, because quite frankly, I think that fancy curtains are a big waste of money. That’s a lot of money. I always try to get them investing in a good art collection or buying contemporary photographs, trying to get them to think about buying things that they’re going to have for the rest of their life. SEASONS: Things that last. BW: That last, that are quality. I like to mix it up. I don’t like to do a room all filled with antiques. But, I’m not afraid of putting something very contemporary with an antique. And I think a lot of people aren’t confident in doing that. They can do the antique look, or they can do the modern look, but what’s prettier than, in a very simple room, having a beautiful antique table? The table looks more interesting. And so I try to get the young people to see, and they usually love it. They’re like, “Oh! Yes! That lovely old table looks fantastic and my kids can put their feet on it, and I’m not going to have a heart attack.” SEASONS: You mentioned collections a minute ago. If someone has an existing collection, how do you incorporate it into a space?
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BW: What I try to do, if I have people who have collections, or things, I try to take all the things they have together and figure out how to hang it to make it look a little different. So it’s not scattered around a room and filling up tabletops and just getting in the way. It’s like putting like things together. Putting pottery together, or mixing pottery with silver. So it becomes a statement on its own and not just scattered willy-nilly all over the house. SEASONS: Southerners — in the Triad, especially— have preserved many of their old houses. What have they taught us? BW: The thing I love about old houses is the craftsmanship. You come into an old house and there are beautiful hand-carved mantels and door casings and things that, today, new architecture just doesn’t have. Even if someone builds a Spring 2017
StyleBook new traditional house, unless they have a great deal of money, they tend to just put in stock molding and stock things. And I think old houses, when they have wide floorboards that were hand-scraped, there’s something that feels good about it. Even if you want to decorate that old house in a modern way, there’s already a warmth to that house. They have a soul. It’s hard to explain. I often think, OK, would I like a modern house with great big windows? And then I think, I love the coziness of my house. I love the fact that I feel it envelops me and is nurturing. And, because it’s handmade and hand-done, and often by local craftsmen, you get something that’s completely unique. SEASONS: When someone wants to decorate an older space, are there temptations they should avoid? We tend to treat these spaces with reverence. How does one overcome the intimidation factor? BW: I think people have got to educate themselves. You know, you don’t wake up one day and become a decorator and have knowledge. They can’t just do it on their computer. They’ve got to get in their car, they’ve got to look at house restorations, they’ve got to go on house tours. They’ve got to be in spaces. The more you see, you’re going to pick up a little bit here, a little bit there, and you’re going to have the confidence to make your own personal taste . . . Then, you need to have some visual curiosity and you learn a lot from all those beautiful houses around you. SEASONS: Is that true for everyone? BW: Some people never are. You know, I have some wonderful friends — very bright, interesting — they have ugly houses. And you know what? They’re always going to have ugly houses. And it’s OK! I don’t care! Because I like them, because they’re intellectual or they’re creative in some other way.
Carriage House Antiques & Home Decor 336.373.6200
2214 Golden Gate Drive Greensboro, NC Monday-Friday 10-6 • Saturday • 10-5 Sunday 1-5 Carriage_House@att.net PHOTO: Daniel Stoner
SEASONS: You’ve got a new lighting collection with Currey & Company that you’re launching at High Point Market in April. Tell us, what can light do for a space? BW: Lighting can make or break a room. The worst thing I find is that people, particularly if they’re building a new house or renovating an old house, they go put a ceiling full of down lights and they think that’s light. Every room needs a little bit of light from different sources. You need a little bit of overhead, you can have some sconces, and then you need some filtered light from lamps and lampshades. Light should come from a number of different sources in a room, and rooms should not be overly lit. You go in a room and all the atmosphere is taken away from an overly lit room. What I do is, I’ll go where I’m going to read, I’ll have a small reading light, so there’s a light for me to read my books. But I don’t need the rooms of my house to be lit like it’s an operating room. SEASONS: You’re returning for the design symposium at MESDA in May. What kinds of topics will you address? BW: There are three of us. We’ll all be sharing our background — a lot of what we’ve been talking about. How did the South influence us? A little bit how to deal with old houses. How to make the old look new, all of those things. We haven’t written the script, so you never know what we’ll cover. When you get three people together, one thing leads to another. h The Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts (MESDA) hosts its annual Design Seminar on May 6 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Old Salem’s James A. Gray Auditorium (900 Old Salem Road), Winston-Salem. To register call (336) 7217369 or go to mesda.org.
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The Desk The desk was made for your convenience. There have always been craftsmen To cut the stout trees and whittle a shape To size for good surface. You may wax it — The heart of it shines in natural light That brings out the woodsy. Once this desk was a tree they called maple. Sometimes in spring great flocks of small birds Approach from the south to roost in it. Now only occasionally do the bravest of deer Glide past the TV to fawn and to nuzzle. They eat the choice leaves. As you might have guessed, it is sometimes difficult To sit and to write with much commotion. Yet this is your desk. You must sit down to it. Years have gone toward its production. — Bob Wickless
Spring 2017
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Gardener’s Notebook
L.A. L.A. Land
In Winston-Salem, L.A. Reynolds Garden Showcase welcomes back Spring By Noah Salt Photograph by Sam Froelich
O
ne morning not too long ago, as winter began to loosen its grip on the western Piedmont and the first early buds of spring were appearing, we dropped by Winston-Salem’s legendary L.A. Reynolds Garden Showcase to try to get a jump on what to look for in the garden centers this spring, as well as some thoughts on the state of gardening. The firm’s youthful co-owner, Ken Long, 54, was happy to oblige, leading us on a walking tour of the popular garden center’s handsome facilities off Styers Ferry Road at the western edge of the city. “Frankly,” Long says, “the change in the nursery and garden retail business has been significant since about 2008. Many in the nursery business were booming up till the Great Recession. Like many other consumer-focused businesses, the gardening retail business took a major hit. The bulb market, for example, has all but dried up since then.” Long says his customers still buy large quantities of daffodils, but the demand for tulips and other similar plants has all but disappeared. This phenomenon, in Long’s view, is both economic and social in nature. During the global crisis and its slow recovery, America’s discretionary spending on recreation and hobbies
Spring 2017
nosedived, affecting everything from travel and tourism to golf. Commercial nurseries and gardening specialists also suffered across the board; many of them had to close up shop. “Since that time, many gardeners have increasingly looked for plants that require less time and expense to maintain,” Long observes. The time people today spend in gardens also has undergone a big change. Families are busy, and time is more precious than ever — you’re competing with soccer on the weekends — and the millennial generation is marrying and settling down later. What’s more, many simply don’t want to garden the way their parents and grandparents do. We’ve had to adjust to those changing social realities.” But change and adaptation are familiar storylines to Ken Long and his brother, Mike, who along with four other siblings collectively own the 36 acres where the firm has been since 1982. One might even say it’s in their bloodline. After their dad, Jerry Long, was squeezed out of his position as the CEO of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. in 1988 (then called RJR Nabisco) — a corporate upheaval immortalized by the best-seller and TV movie Barbarians at the Gate — the “retired” executive began “looking around for a family business we could grow,” as his son explains. Seasons • Style & Design 19
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Artist’s Rendering
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“Dad wasn’t a big gardener, but he was a workaholic who really loved his yard. We grew up on two acres in Clemmons,” Long says of his father, who passed away in 2010. “The yard fascinated him.” About that same time, after trying a couple of things that didn’t pan out, the younger Long enrolled at Forsyth Tech to study horticulture. “We looked at buying a couple of different kind of companies, but then learned that the L.A. Reynolds nursery was up for sale.” The nursery, no relation to the Reynolds family of tobacco fame, was one of the Twin City’s most reliable resources. In the late 1930s and ’40s, the company’s original owner was believed to have planted many of the beautiful hardwood trees that define some of the city’s finer neighborhoods along Buena Vista and Stratford roads. L.A. Reynolds also grew fruit trees and ran a thriving landscaping and road-paving business (the firm is believed to have graded the Interstate that passes through downtown Winston-Salem) and operated popular satellite garden shops downtown and in other selected places for many years. The Longs purchased the company in 1991, just in time for a boom in home gardening’s popularity, fueled by in part by a surging economy, a robust home building industry, and even the popularity of Martha Stewart, who once proclaimed to this very reporter that gardening would be the “sex of the 1990s.” She proved to be correct. The Longs changed the center’s name to L.A. Reynolds Garden Showcase, rebuilt greenhouses and steadily added retail space through a series of expanded showrooms, arguably becoming the region’s go-to plant retail outlet. They also replaced the store’s traditional customer red wagons with larger shopping carts and “doubled our sales in almost no time.” Another trend they noticed was that 80 percent of their customers were female. “So we really focused on making this a pleasant shopping experience, which included high quality impulse items, and unique gifts for home and garden,” Ken Long explains. Adapting to challenging times across their industry, the award-winning firm also added a seasonal gallery that does a brisk trade in Christmas decorations, and artificial trees and wreaths. The recent addition of a popular line of patio furniture called W2120 — made from reclaimed tropical woods salvaged from old boats —and other outdoor-themed home goods has significantly expanded the company’s retail profile. But make no mistake; come April, Ken Long and staff will be busier than bees in the orchard that once occupied the land where the distinctive greenroofed center sits. The nursery annually puts on at least fifty seasonal workers to handle the large crowds that begin to show up about the time Long and his staff hold their popular annual Open House, typically the week before Easter. A similar Open House is held in the early fall. “It’s a fun day, and a chance to welcome back our customers and make new ones. Among other things, we give out about 1,200 free hot dogs,” Long notes with a smile. “But at the end of the day we’re a dirty business. We love getting down in the dirt and helping customers learn what works for them — and how to make their gardens thrive. These days our mission is to serve and help create Spring 2017
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Seasons • Style & Design 21
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StyleBook educated gardener,” he adds, noting that he’ll be returning to a popular call-in radio garden show that airs on WSJS’s talk radio (AM 600) on Friday mornings this spring.
Loropetalum “Jazz Hands” Also called Chinese witch hazel, awardwinning durable medium-size shrub (4–6 feet heigh), drought resistant and pest-free, it’s great in the border or mass plantings, with mature foliage producing variegated leaves splashed with rich purple, fuchsia and white, and stunning pink flowers in middle spring.
Ken Long’s “Dirty” Half Dozen Herewith, a list of Ken Long’s favorite plants he expects to be popular this season: Tropical Hibiscus Originating in Asia and the Pacific, related to rose of Sharon and hollyhocks in the mallow family, these vibrant bloomers (annuals in this zone) come in a variety of bold colors, making them ideal for sunny containers. Hostas and Caladiums Ideal plants for your shade garden, adding rich color, deep hues and texture. Both thrive in rich soil, and are partial to full shade and humid warmth. Most hostas work well in our Piedmont zones, but Caladiums are only hardy in zones 9 and above. Great for borders and planters. Miss Huff Lantana A small shrub and true perennial — meaning hardy in this area — that also works great in patio containers and hillside plantings. Showy orange and pink flowers that bloom all summer long prefer full sun and are low maintenance.
Lemon Lime Nandina A new take on a garden classic, this modest-sized evergreen shrub, first ever limegreen Bamboo of Heaven, is highly pest- and drought-resistant and thrives in full sun to partial shade, producing bright lime-green leaves in spring that lighten up any dark space or foundation border. “Sunshine” Ligustrum Compact and flowerless, a fantastic border/container shrub — no taller than 3 feet — that stays golden all summer long, thrives in full sun and even makes a terrific hedge, providing rich year-round color. h L.A. Reynolds Garden Showcase, 4400 Styers Ferry Road, Winston-Salem. Open 9–5 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays, reopening Sundays in March. Contact: (336) 945-3776 www.lareynolds.com
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Seasons • Style & Design 23
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Spring Almanac By Ash Alder
Ballad of Spring If ever there were a more delicious poem than spring, perhaps only the bluebird would know it. Or the nectardrunk duskywing. Or the glossy black rat snake, so entranced by the color of the robin’s egg that he swallows the pastel vessel whole. Although the vernal equinox occurs on March 20, the crocus appeared in mid-February — a perfect illustration of what American short story writer Henry Van Dyke meant when he compared the “first day of spring” with the “first spring day.” There’s a world of magic in between. When April arrives, sow the beets and the broccoli, the beans and the cukes; harvest the tender green shoots of asparagus. Come May, plug blood lily bulbs along the winding garden path. And when it rains, watch the supple Earth receive her gift fully and deeply. Try to do the same.
Must-See Moon According to National Geographic, one of the “Top 7 Must-See Sky Events for 2017” will occur on Monday, April 10. On this dreamy spring night, just moments after sunset, Jupiter and the near-full Pink Moon will rise together in the Eastern sky like forbidden lovers.
The Old Farmer’s Almanac speculates that a full moon in April brings frost. While it’s not actually pink, Algonquin tribes likely named this month’s full moon for the wild ground phlox that signifies the arrival of spring. Also called the Sprouting Grass, Fish and Egg Moon, if the full Pink Moon rises pale on April 11, bet your folklore-loving bippy it will rain.
How Does Your Garden Grow? To some, a stone is a stone is a stone. But if you’re one who believes in the healing properties of crystals, consider sprinkling a few among your spring plantings for good measure. Historically known as the “gardener’s stone,” moss agate is said to promote the growth of new crops and to help invoke general abundance and prosperity. In the spirit of Easter (Sunday, April 16), and with a gracious nod to the festival’s namesake, fertility goddess Ostara, tuck a handful of shiny gems into secret nooks and crannies of your garden as if it were an egg hunt for the resident fairies.
It’s spring fever. That is what the name of it is. And when you’ve got it, you want — oh, you don’t quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so! –Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer, Detective
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Everything is blooming most recklessly; if it were voices instead of colors, there would be an unbelievable shrieking into the heart of the night. –Rainer Maria Rilke
The Medicine Chest Want to try your hand at an herb garden? Start now. Since most herbs thrive in full or filtered sun, carve out a cozy outdoor space with optimal light and drainage. Then, allow yourself to dream. Conjure up visions of lush beds with tidy labels, dark opal basil tangled with pineapple sage, aromatic bundles of herbs hanging upside down inside the coolest rooms of the house. Whether it’s medieval apothecary or fresh pesto that you’re craving, spring is here to help make manifest your fantasy.
Here’s what to plant this season: Basil – Anti-inflammatory. Fresh is best. Oregano – Treats skin disorders when applied topically. Chives – Boost heart health and immune system. Parsley – Rich in cancer-fighting compounds. Sage – Digestive aid. Rosemary – Improves memory. Thyme – Antiseptic and antifungal properties.
Spring 2017
Our Future Earth Earth Day falls on Saturday, April 22. Founded by U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson in 1970, what started as a national day to bring environmental concerns to the forefront of public awareness eventually led to the establishment of the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act — a grassroots shockwave at its finest. Earth Day has since blossomed into a global event recognized by nearly 200 countries. In 2016, Earth Day Network (EDN) launched a Trees for the Earth campaign in an attempt to reverse the planet’s deforestation trend. According to the EDN website, Earth is losing more than 15 billion trees each year. In other words: 56 acres of forest per minute. The campaign goal is to plant 7.8 billion trees — one for every person projected to be on the planet — by 2020, Earth Day’s 50th anniversary. For more information or to get involved, visit www.earthday.org. But there are countless ways to show the Earth your love on this (and any) day. Plant a tree in your garden. Buy local produce. Organize a community cleanup. And don’t forget to stop and smell those knockout azaleas.
Scrumptious Words Henry James once mused that “summer afternoon” were perhaps the “two most beautiful words in the English language.” “Easter brunch” make a lovely pair. Ditto “asparagus frittata.” So if you find yourself hosting Easter brunch, and life gives you crispy spears of asparagus, steam until tender, then add to favorite egg dish. You won’t regret it. h
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Spirits
Younger than Springtime Jumpstart your cocktails with the season’s bounty Story and Photograph by Tony Cross
I
t’s safe to say that pollen is here. Having a big nose allows me to inhale all the lovely kinds, so believe me when I say that after my sinuses get back to normal, I can start enjoying my favorite time of the year. Springtime in the Carolinas means longer days, flowers in bloom, and a variety of delicious produce from local farmers markets. So when it comes to making drinks this time of the year, it’s easy to draw inspiration from my surroundings. Even if you don’t have your own garden, there are plenty of markets around that have many herbs and fruits that you can incorporate into your cocktails. Below, a few of my favorites.
Strawberry-Basil Smash
I was lucky enough to have access to a garden at a restaurant I ran during the U.S. Open in the Sandhills a few years back. We had weekly deliveries from a local farmer when both basil and strawberries were abundant. Using North Carolina’s own Cardinal Gin, it was easy to put together a bright and flavorful concoction. Cardinal Gin is slightly floral, which makes it ideal for pairing with any number of herbs. In general, gin is my go-to spirit for springtime cocktails. Since distillers usually use multiple varieties of herbs and
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citrus peels when creating gin, bartenders love the challenge of finding complementary flavors. In a cocktail shaker: 3 strawberries, diced 3 basil leaves 2 dashes Angostura Orange Bitters 1/2 ounce Simple syrup (2:1) 3/4 ounce lemon juice 1/8 ounce Chartreuse Green Liqueur 1 3/4 ounce Cardinal Gin Ice Gently muddle strawberries, basil, bitters and simple syrup in a cocktail shaker. Add juice, spirits and ice. Shake like hell for 10 seconds. Double strain into rocks glass with one large ice cube. Garnish with a basil leaf.
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Chamomile-infused Dolin Vermouth de Chambéry Blanc
Most of us have forgotten that dry and sweet vermouth are great on their own. If refrigerated after opening, your bottle of fortified wine can last for a few months. I totally stole the idea of infusing chamomile in dry vermouth from bartender Brandon Wise, out of Denver. Mr. Wise’s drink had a few other ingreSpring 2017
StyleBook dients in it, but what I decided to do was quite simple: Reverse the martini. You see, the specs for your standard gin martini may vary slightly, but here’s an example: 2 1/2 ounces gin and 3/4 ounce dry vermouth. I prefer using Plymouth Gin, because it is slightly earthy, but soft. I always end up going back to Dolin when it comes to dry vermouths. Made in France, the dry is fresh and extremely clean on the palate. For this infusion, however, I opted for the Dolin Blanc, which is like the dry, but more floral with a touch of sweetness. I wanted vermouth to be the star in this low-proof cocktail to prove the naysayers wrong. The Sexyback was born.
Sexyback
Build in a rocks glass: 2 1/2 ounce chamomile-infused Dolin Vermouth de Chambéry Blanc (see recipe below) 3/4 ounce Plymouth Gin Add ice and stir for 50 revolutions Strain into a chilled cocktail coupe glass Take a twist of lemon, expressing the oils over the cocktail, and then put the lemon into the drink.
Chamomile Infusion
1 750ml bottle Dolin Vermouth de Chambéry Blanc 6 Alvita Chamomile Tea bags Steep teabags into vermouth for about 4 minutes, or right after the color starts to turn a straw color. Refrigerate after using.
Rosemary Syrup
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I’ve always loved infusing rosemary into spirits and syrups. I’ve let it sit in cachaça, pineapple syrup, gin and plain ol’ simple syrup. There is nothing to making this concoction, and it’ll allow you to play around with different spirits when you’re playing bartender. I always favor a thicker simple syrup; two parts sugar to one part water is the ratio I stick with. This doesn’t really make the syrup sweeter; it does, however, give the syrup a thicker consistency so your cocktails don’t seem to be “watered down,” so to speak. In a saucepan, put one cup of water over medium-high heat. Before it comes to a boil, slowly add two cups of sugar while stirring. Once the sugar is dissolved, turn off the heat, and add four stalks of washed rosemary. Leave the rosemary in the syrup overnight, or if you’re in a hurry, let it sit until the syrup cools. Adding a healthy splash of vodka will keep this syrup fresh for many months (just make sure you keep it refrigerated). To get you started on a rosemary syrup cocktail, here’s a simple recipe that uses vodka, although I prefer it with gin (try it sometime with Sutler’s Gin out of Winston-Salem).
Ride the Cliché
1/2 ounce lemon juice 1/2 ounce rosemary sryup 1/2 ounce St-Germain elderflower liqueur 2 ounces TOPO Organic Vodka Combine all ingredients into a cocktail shaker, add ice and shake vigorously for 10-15 seconds. Strain into a chilled cocktail coupe glass. Garnish with a thin lemon slice with a sprig of rosemary placed through the middle. Cheers! h Tony Cross is a bartender who runs a cocktail catering company, Reverie Cocktails, in Southern Pines. Spring 2017
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Seasons • Style & Design 27
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DESIGNING WOMEN
Her Best Life
Kristy Woodson Harvey blends storytelling and interior design with a literary flourish By Nancy Oakley
A
s the old saw goes, “Write what you know,” and if there’s anything Kristy Woodson Harvey knows a little something about, it’s interior design. A blogger and novelist, the Salisbury native didn’t train in the discipline, but “grew up with a mother and grandmother who were always tweaking and doing things. I was always at the fabric store or Home Depot,” she recalls. An early creative channel of Harvey’s was the written word. At 16 years old she had her own column in the Salisbury Post and occasionally contributed to its gardening column, “The Garden Game.” “It was about vegetables or weird things that people grew in their yards,” Harvey explains, but she soon discovered that readers weren’t as interested in “the giant squash or whatever, but that these people had an interesting story that needed to be told.” She’s since come to believe the same principle applies to people and their homes. In 2010, with a journalism degree from UNC-Chapel Hill in hand, Harvey and her mother, Beth Woodson, started their own blog, Design Chic (mydesignchic.com). A celebration of all things that make a home beautiful, “candles and flowers,
Spring 2017
molding and music, and using your fine china every day,” the blog, which now boasts more than 140,000 followers, offers decorating ideas from Instagram, posts from guest bloggers, links to shopping sites and tons more. Harvey has interviewed designers, architects and various mavens in the industry, and has seen trends come and go. “It’s funny. Looking back, we were writing a lot about French furniture; everything was very decadent and rich,” she laughs. “I think now we’re definitely seeing a movement toward a more minimalist kind of look. Even in upscale places where everything is beautiful, with fine china and antiques. Things are cut down a notch.” Harvey says her own aesthetic parallels this trend, a departure from her mother’s and grandmother’s tendencies toward more formal, “very accessorized, very done” interiors. Like so many of her readers, Harvey’s style choices are driven by lifestyle. She and her husband, William, live in a restored house built in 1905 in Beaufort, N.C., where they are raising their toddler son, also named William. “We bought this house as a beach house and I wanted to preserve the integrity of it, but I didn’t want you to walk in and feel all jilted, like you were in a different time,” Harvey says. But, she continues, “I wanted
At 30-something she is living her best life, which as her own blog proclaims, “begins at home.”
Seasons • Style & Design 29
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people to feel like they could walk in off the boat with sandy feet, and not think, ‘Oh my gosh! I’m on this antique rug in the hallway!’” So Harvey compromised, blending some antique pieces of furniture with seagrass floor coverings. “I love them anywhere,” she says. “I would use them in the most formal of dining rooms.” And in a move that might seem counterintuitive to a mother of an energetic 5-year-old, Harvey also opted for a white leather sofa. “They have a lot of texture,” she observes, adding with a laugh, “and you can spray it with Windex, and the smear will go away!” A plus, when entertaining guests with preferences for red wine and rearing a toddler eager to express his artistic urges with a Sharpie. The desire to make spaces more livable fuels another trend that Harvey is fascinated with: “the whole new closet/office thing,” she says, referring to the current vogue in transforming walk-in closets into home offices. “It’s an age-old situation: a room of one’s own,” Harvey observes. “It’s what we’re all looking for.” Especially if you’re a blogger and novelist who’s penned pieces in Starbucks or in the backseat of a car. In 2015, Harvey’s first novel, Dear Carolina (Penguin Random House), debuted and was well-received. Set in the South, it chronicles the story of a baby girl with two mothers, one adoptive and one biological — and it just so happens that one of them is an interior designer. On the heels of Dear Carolina came another novel, Lies and Other Acts of Love, in 2016, a generational tale set in Raleigh. This spring, Harvey will introduce a third novel, published by Simon & Schuster, Slightly South of Simple (see excerpt below), at the Codarus showroom at the High Point Market on April 23. The book’s main character is, yet again an interior designer. “Design is kind of a metaphor for everything,” Harvey says, explaining that the main character, Ansley, is able to navigate life’s changes and hurdles because of her design background. “You kind of see in the story the way that design has helped her redesign her life. And that coincides with redesigning spaces. That was interesting for me to write,” the novelist says. It will be the first in a series about a family of characters — all strong Southern women — and the series is a first for Harvey. “It’s a fun new challenge,” she says, “to write a story that’s bigger. I have a lot more pages to get to these women. One of the most fun things was to see what these women have gone through and the ways they remember them. Something I was really fascinated by was how memory plays tricks on us.” Somewhere, between writing the series, running Design Chic and raising a family, Harvey is finding the time to collaborate with a designer on a coffee table book, which she hopes will be published in the next couple of years. At 30-something she is living her best life, which as her own blog proclaims, “begins at home.”
The Not-So-Simple Life
An excerpt from Slightly South of Simple
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Oh, the energies and tensiosn that fill an all-female household — especially amid upheaval! In “The Tide Rolls In,” the second chapter of Kristy Woodson Harvey’s Slightly South of Simple, the newly widowed protagonist, Ansley, has just moved from New York City with her three young daughters, Caroline, Emerson and Sloane, to her small hometown of Peachtree Bluff, Georgia. There, she begins the arduous task of rebuilding her life. I love pretty much every quirky thing about my town. The weird people and the weirder traditions, the over-the-top celebrations and beautiful old homes. I love that I can feel like I am completely at the end of the Earth but then, two bridges and twenty minutes later, enter an adjacent town large enough to have everything I need. I thrive on the quiet and privacy of the off-season but the summer vacationers who feel free to photograph my home and sometimes even Spring 2017
StyleBook peek in through my windows have never been my favorite thing. And Caroline has never been my favorite child. I know that’s not nice to say, but it’s nicer than saying she’s my least favorite child, which is really the truth. I love her to pieces. I’d take a bullet for her. I’d sooner die than see something bad happen to her, and I would never, ever want to live without her. But she is . . . tricky. So I guess that’s why I didn’t answer the first time she called. I was in Sloane Emerson, my interior design shop, which, yes, I did name after my other two, more favored children. It’s a bit of a family joke, actually. When we moved to Peachtree Bluff, Caroline kicking and screaming in her designer jeans the whole way, I acted casual about opening my store. I acted like it was something I was doing to take my mind off of my beloved husband dying, like it was something I was doing to assert myself. In actuality, I’d had to go back
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to work because, while we were told we would be receiving millions of dollars in life insurance, we hadn’t. I thought it would intensify the general panic and nightmares and PTSD around our new, very large, very potentially haunted home if my girls knew that. So when I announced that I was getting back into decorating, my darling jewel of a daughter Caroline had said, “Oh, good. I hear the camper-trailer design business is really flourishing right now.” And when I enthused that the business was going so well that I thought I would open a storefront, my sweet-tempered, well-adjusted child snapped, “If you name it Caroline’s, I will die.” So I didn’t name it Caroline’s. I named it Sloane Emerson. It was the first thing I had done in quite some time that my eldest daughter thought was funny. h SLIGHTLY SOUTH OF SIMPLE by Kristy Woodson Harvey. Copyright c 2017 by Kristy Woodson Harvey. Reprinted by permission of Gallery Books, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. Spring 2017
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StyleBook
The Architect’s Son
Lessons From My Father’s House As in design, so in life By Peter Freeman Photograph by Amy Freeman
M
y father would have turned 90 this past fall. Time meanders and memories scatter, and from time to time I squint to remember the contours of his face or the tone of his voice. But as chance would have it, the lessons of my father are all around me. My wife, Amy, and I stumbled on the opportunity to purchase the High Point house I grew up in many years ago, and seized the moment — not only for nostalgic reasons, but because the house “got” us. That’s right . . . the quintessentially midcentury Modern
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house was smart, efficient, simple and up-to-date with loads of personality — even though it was designed more than 60 years ago and as you probably guessed, by my father. When he built the house, my dad, Bill Freeman, was an up-and-coming architect of 26, with a young bride and a newborn son. And as I have come to learn, even at that early age, he was able to demonstrate through his craft important lessons that I’ve carried through my life. “Be curious,” he would say, so that I might look at the world from a different perspective, to continue to search or see another approach Spring 2017
StyleBook to a problem that I hadn’t seen before. In a similar way, the house offers an invitation for curiosity, with sweeping views to the outdoors and seductive layered views from room to room, constantly reminding me to look again. “Anything worth doing is worth doing right,” was Dad’s way of making sure that my siblings and I poured our all into any task — and just as important, that we finished with the same vigor we started with. How often, in my youth, did I lose interest in a given project? I can’t believe I ever earned my Eagle Scout Award. Without my father’s guidance and firm encouragement, I may not have completed many of my proudest accomplishments. His persistence and thoroughness is evident throughout the house, its thoughtful details carried through in plan and elevation with the golden rectangle as an organizing element. (The golden rectangle or “divine proportion” has been used for centuries as a ratio for composition in design and the arts.) The structure is honest, visible and an integral part of the aesthetic. The rhythmic composite beams My father reminded me penetrate the width of the house and gracefully intersect the built-up columns quietly following through that the act of doing their task. “Half the battle is getting the paper taped down to the drawing overcomes stagnation and board,” is another of Dad’s pearls of wisdom. It served as a constant rethat a little “get up and minder for me to just get started, not to hesitate and not to procrastinate. This lesson has carried me far, espego” goes a long way. cially in difficult times when the challenges of the day seem unrelenting. My father reminded me that the act of doing overcomes stagnation, and that a little “get up and go” goes a long way. But I don’t have to search far to seize this energy: Dancing light that pierces through overhead skylights and carefully positioned windows creates dynamic displays of movement, shaping and reshaping the space that is our home. What a range of mood and spirit the light and shadow provides from morning to evening, day to day and [season to season!] “Be brave” was my father’s most common farewell. What a powerful salutation to embrace my next exploit. Those two words have always stuck with me as an open invitation to walk fearlessly, unafraid to express myself or be an individual. In the same way, our house is truly an original. Designed for a specific site and its environmental attributes — a wooded slope and small creek below — it combines authenticity with uniqueness in both form and attitude. Its style (International Style Modern) was a bold departure from other homes from the same era. Just living here, I intuited that my father followed his own path. My family moved away from the house while I was still in grade school, but the lessons of my father, so evident in its walls, followed me. Now, I have the opportunity to share those lessons with my family. Some would say I’ve come full-circle; I prefer to call it coming home. h Peter Freeman is a practicing architect with Freeman Kennett Architects and a self-described modernist and new urbanist. Following in his dad and granddad’s footsteps, Peter continued in the family practice and assisted his father in the design of the Greensboro Country Club, The Grandfather Golf and Country Club and various projects for GTCC, among others.
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Spring, Time for Restoration
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Spring 2017
StyleBook
The Serial Eater
Three Great Meals Photographs by Sam Froelich
A Bowlful of Wonderful for Breakfast in Winston-Salem
It’s a chilly spring morn and Serial Eater needs to get hoppin.’ When we hear the strains of “Let’s Go to the Hop” waft out into the Arts District’s Trade Street from a beloved institution, Mary’s Gourmet Diner, we’ve found our breakfast stop. Follow the red brick floor, past the mural of a fantastical jungle whose inhabitants include, among others, a nymph and a dinosaur, past the city’s very first Art-o-Mat, to a little perch under yet more fantastical murals featuring figures wearing animal masks. Serial Eater plops down directly under Mr. Fox, while Mr. Ram looks enviously at our order: one of Mary’s signature Gritz Bowls featuring yellow stone-ground grits and two fried eggs. The toppings vary widely and S.E. is torn between Downhome Gritz, with jalapeño pimiento cheese and country ham, and Gritz & Greens, with seasonal greens, tomato and feta. We’re feeling heart-healthy this a.m. and choose the latter. When it comes with a spinach leaf smothered in warm, gooey grittiness and a soup spoon to scoop up every mouthful, we know we’ve made the right choice. A dash of another Twin City fave, Texas Pete hot sauce, and breakfast is a feta-compli! Mary’s Gourmet Diner, 723 North Trade St., Winston-Salem. Info: (336) 723-7239 or marysgourmetdiner.net.
Billy Bob Speaks in Jamestown
The Serial Eater is awfully proud of his — or is it her? — Southern roots, particularly as expressed in the art of eating. Proper pronouns notwithstanding, this may explain why we were so excited to finally check out popular Southern Roots Restaurant on Main Street in Jamestown, a place we’ve been eager to try since hearing tales of chef-owner Lisa Hawley’s authentic culinary magic. What better place to begin our discovery than lunch — and with a sandwich, no less, that speaks directly to our cotton-picking heritage, aka. the Billy Bob sandwich, a monumental cultural achievement involving grilled Gouda-pimiento cheese, applewoodsmoked bacon and fried green tomatoes on sourdough. To complement the affair, we ordered a side of fresh okra, artfully split and tenderly sautéd with caramelized onions and roasted romas with mozzarella, a unique style (like many of the dishes, we learned) chef Lisa learned at the elbow of her Southern grandmother. After our outstanding encounter with Billy Bob, we kicked ourselves (gently) for taking so long to investigate Southern Roots — probably because we feared it might be about as authentic (and as annoying) as Paula Dean’s absurdly stagey “y’aaaaaw.” Brother, were we ever wrong. Lisa Hawley and her staff are the real deal, the best of Southern-style cooking, which means we’re headed back for supper when the SE will try to decide whether to order buttermilk fried oysters or bourbon-glazed Angus flat-iron steak. Southern Roots, 119 East Main, Jamestown, (336) 882-5570.
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StyleBook Dinner for Two in Burlington
Standards, the Serial Eater believes, are vitally important — especially in a favorite restaurant. Frankly, we hadn’t eaten at The Original Prego’s Trattoria on South Church Street in Burlington in quite some time. Long an anchor of the Alamance dining scene, Prego’s left a highly favorable impression when we first dined there seven or eight years ago with our eager Elon University freshman. Then as now, we were pleasantly surprised by the authenticity of the robust Italian cooking and the reasonable prices, a circumstance far more common to Boston’s North End than small cities of the Old North State. If we properly recall the evening — never easy at the SE’s advancing age — the chicken breast piccata and a highly suitable cab from a modest but well-formed wine list sent this parental authority away singing an small aria of contentment. Which explains why a second visit to confirm or revise that first impression was long overdue. Restaurants, like second presidential terms, after all, sometimes tend to lose their mojo in terms of quality, originality and service. Happily, we can report that things are just fine at the cozily atmospheric eatery situated in the shadow of Holly Hill Mall at South Main and Church. For a Monday night, the place was full of diners and the service was beyond impeccable — attentive and genuinely graceful, in fact. Best of all, the food was even better than we remembered. Our dining companion — a self-proclaimed world expert on gnocci — swears Prego’s is the best she’s eaten this side of the River Charles, while the SE was wooed by an honest, simple lasagna dish richly layered with eggplant and sausage, an Italian classic that’s so
easy to get wrong. With warm fried squares of polenta to start and an equally reasonable cabernet sauvignon, the total for two was a very companionable $55 with tip, making a third trip a must. The word “prego” has multiple meanings, in italian, but the ones we prefer translate to “Thank you” or simply “You’re welcome” — the perfect name for a true standard. The Original Prego’s Trattoria, 2740 South Church St., Burlington (336) 586-0292. Reservations accepted but not mandatory. h
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2 locAtIons to serVe You
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Spring 2017
Spring 2017
“When spring came, even the false spring, there were no problems except where to be happiest.” Ernest Hemingway Photograph by Amy Freeman Spring 2017
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Rock Solid D.I.Y. details complement a log cabin kit on High Rock Lake By Nancy Oakley • Photographs by Amy Freeman
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“W
e stay outdoors most of the time. We’ll come out here and never even come in the house,” Stan Clinard says with an ironic laugh. Ironic, because the house he’s referring to, a log cabin perched on a remote finger of High Rock Lake in Davidson County, took more than two years of painstaking construction. “Prior to building, we’d come out and camp here all the time,” he continues, “a whole bunch of kids and dads.” But when Stan Clinard and his wife, Dana, full-time residents of High Point, were traveling on the highway outside Statesville and espied Southland Log Cabin Homes, inspiration struck. “We saw a kit and we loved how it looked on the outside,” says Dana, “and it came with a free garage.” Their woodsy, lakeside campground, they decided, would become a comfortable — and sleek — weekend getaway.
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There was just one problem: The Clinards’ spread is part of a forestry program that timbered the area’s native hardwoods in 2004 to grow loblolly pines for pulp wood. Lots of loblollies. They would have to be felled, not only to create a clearing for the house, but for the winding gravel road leading to it. That’s when construction became a family affair. “My dad helped with that,” says Dana, explaining that her father had the know-how and access to the necessary equipment to “knock down the trees and pull them out of the way.” “He knew how to do it all,” Stan adds. But even with Dad’s expertise, cutting the road and clearing the land was unusually arduous, thanks to hijinks from Mother Nature: The project began in 2013, “the wettest winter of all time,” Stan remembers. “We were constantly having to wait for dry days.” Additionally, the terrain was full of what Dana describes as “humongous” boulders that her father had to excavate. The challenges prompted the Clinards to christen their second home with the name “Rock and Roots.”
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heir cleverness would extend to the construction of the cabin, as well. The design of the kit called for a second story in the front of the house. “We didn’t need all those chopped up little bedrooms up there,” Dana says, explaining that the house’s position on a slope called for a finished basement, so why not install two bedrooms and bathrooms for their teenage son and daughter downstairs? As for the master suite, what better use of the garage that came with the building kit? Both decisions added considerable light and space to the core of the house, an open living and dining area lined with rear windows flooded with sunlight, and expansive views of the lake and shoreline opposite. Minus the second level, the cabin’s beamed ceilings now measured upward of 20 feet and required a vertical support beam just beyond the front door (painted a bright, welcoming, fire-engine red). “I was like, ‘Let’s do something that’s a little bit more fun,’” Stan recalls. “The guy that was doing the grading said, ‘I just cut down a bunch of cedars if you want any of them.’” And that’s how the trunk of a cedar tree came to stand in the middle of the Clinards’ living room. They also used massive cedars to build the I-beam entrance to the property, and cedar stumps as coffee tables for the wraparound porch containing some of Dana’s
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D.I.Y. ingenuity: an old trunk, a couple of wicker rocking chairs. “‘Are you sure about those things?’” she recalls Stan asking, her, dubious of the chairs’ “orangey” color. “But I loved the shape of them,” Dana says. She was able to see past the off-putting hue and refurbished the chairs in an elegant dark brown; in a whimsical touch, she sewed faux-fur cushions and added some brightly colored pillows — an effect that would rival anything in Robert Redford’s Sundance Collection, and at a fraction of the cost. Dana’s artistic eye is responsible for the cabin’s eclectic décor that is warm and inviting, yet decidedly chic. And as incredible as it seems, she has no formal training as an artist or an interior designer. “I like art and I love thrifting,” she says. By the stone fireplace is an armchair with a snazzy black-and-white pattern, a junk store find that Dana picked up for a song ($35), refinished and reupholstered. Across from it is a worn leather sofa, complemented by a couple of polished wood end tables with amoeba-like shapes that she found at Capa Interiors on North Main Street in High Point. A blocky sectional sofa ordered from IKEA (along with all the the beds and barstools) adds a midcentury vibe to the living room, as do the metal kitchen light fixtures that remind one of a knight’s chain mail, perfect complements to the massive white granite bar. In contrast are various pops of color — a pillow here, a throw rug there, a couple of cherry-red ottomans, and most striking, the dining room chairs. At $12 apiece, they were another thrifty score that got a makeover. “I had a bunch of Kantha quilts,” Dana explains, referring to the multi-colored, hand-stitched throws, a
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Bangladeshi art form. “I had them for years and I knew I’d use them at some point. So I cut them up and laid them out and took them to the upholsterer and said, ‘This is how I want them.’”
S
he had time to hunt and gather, as it were, and assemble the cabin’s furnishings to her liking, she says, “because it took so long to build.” Fourteen months, to be precise. During that time, a host of mishaps occurred, not the least of which was the stamped concrete floor of the basement level that set before it could be leveled and had to be dug up and repoured. “A lot of stuff had to be done twice,” says Stan. The list of redos grew so long that the Clinards began to wonder if they’d built atop an Indian burial ground. On one of her thrift store excursions, Dana bought an Indian head. “I thought, ‘He’s going to have a home here, to bring some good juju through the house!’” she laughs. A major hurdle was creating and installing the steel railing for the stairs to the basement. “We got the idea for it on Pinterest,” Stan says, “but it was hard finding somebody to do it.” Eventually a welder came out to the site and built the solid banister supported by cross-hatched steel wire. It creates an industrial vibe, echoed in a rippled corrugated metal wall, courtesy of D.H. Griffin’s scrap Spring 2017
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yard. Here hangs an unusual painting by Greensboro artist Michael Northuis, one of his signature “Eye cons” jammed with figures — a fellow balancing a wine glass on his nose, another wielding a pair of scissors, a bald chanteuse, a strange masked fellow — and symbols, such as a horn, a classical column and a figurine of Romulus and Remus, the legendary founders of Rome. “It’s kind of hard to figure out,” Stan observes. But it makes a festive addition to a downstairs den with flat-screen TV and a bar. In contrast are the warm pine stairs crafted by one of the construction workers who framed the house. The “off-the-grid types,” as Dana characterizes the motley crew, literally camped at the construction site while it was being built, hanging their pots and pans from what is now the downstairs fireplace. “They put a cot in the back bedroom. They had a lantern and books,” Dana remembers. And they were meticulous craftsmen. Dana points to the staircase’s smooth risers bearing nary a hint of joint or a nail hole. The Clinards had the help of friends, too: one who assisted in erecting the huge I-beam entrance, another who helped install the water lines. “In turn, they have been able to hunt, and fish, ride bikes,” Dana observes. At this, her husband’s eyes light up. “We ride really light motorcycles,” Stan enthuses, explaining that more trails were cut through the dense loblollies to accommodate the sport. They’ll also enjoy using a tractor and mini-excavator with a weeder to clear out the weeds and underbrush that grow under the younger trees. The outdoors, of course, is the reason the Clinards built the log cabin. Construction woes behind them, they enjoyed their first summer at the cabin in 2015. They’ve kayaked down the narrow creek off the bend where the house sits; the kids have enjoyed paddle boarding, wake boarding, horseback riding Spring 2017
along yet more trails. (In a couple of nods to this, Dana added a wooden horse’s head, courtesy of Capa, in the dining room, and colored in a giclée print of a horse at full gallop in one of the downstairs bedrooms.) From the back porch, where, she says, “there’s always a breeze,” they’ve watched the rippling currents of the lake, listened to the wind rustle among the pines and the howl of coyotes at night. They’ve observed bald eagles and waterfowl. Stan, who comes to the cabin once or twice a week, installed wood boxes for wood ducks to inhabit in the winter. Artifacts from their walks around the property fill the narrow ledge next to the stairs to the basement: shells, feathers, animal skulls. Dana picks up a piece of wood with a swirling imprint in it. “They’re branches that had vines wrapped around them,” she says, fingering the spiral grooves in the wood. “We found them down by the water.” It is a place where the tree roots that Dana’s father excavated are being replaced by intangible ones, as the basket of wine corks atop the refrigerator, or the half-finished jigsaw puzzle in the dining room attest. The Clinard children’s friends are “piled up everywhere,” on visits, says Dana; she’s used the cabin for a convivial girls’ weekend; Stan’s mother has come and enjoys strolls around the lake; last year the family celebrated Dana’s parents’ 50th wedding anniversary at the cabin. Over the stone fireplace in the living room hangs a contemporary painting of two figures standing side by side, Dana’s gift to Stan for their own wedding anniversary. In the front hall is another, a print in purple hues of a tree whose swirling roots take up the bottom half of the image. “It seemed appropriate,” Dana muses. For indeed, the Clinards’ roots are the sort that endure. h Nancy Oakley is the senior editor of Seasons. Seasons • Style & Design 49
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The Tree
Doctor
Malcolm Brown’s private arboretum in Winston-Salem By Ross Howell Jr. • Photographs by Amy Freeman
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“M
agnificent, isn’t it?” Malcolm Brown muses, gazing at the huge white oak within the circular drive of his Winston-Salem home. “At one time the city was forested with oak and hickory, but most of the native trees are gone. All the more reason to try to preserve these old ones.” It’s a hot, sunny day, and shadows dapple the lawn. The shade is a blessing. Big boxwoods front the house, and there’s pachysandra ground cover. Beyond a fence two catalpa trees flourish. I notice a gingko at the side of the house. “Planted 20 years ago,” Brown says. “It seems to be quite happy in that spot. And over there, next to the drive. That’s another white oak.” The tree looks to be about 20 feet in height. “I planted it with my daughter when she was 8 years old. Now she’s 34. Trees have a way of teaching you patience,” he says. We amble along the gravel drive toward the back of the house. “I don’t know that I can really explain my fascination with trees,” Brown reflects. “I climbed them as a boy, and I always liked the feel of their bark. But it wasn’t until later in life that I became truly interested.” A retired rheumatologist, Brown is a native of Chicago. He received his M.D. from Columbia University, and practiced medicine in New York City for a decade. “So I’m a Yankee, you see,” he says with a grin, “although I did some studies in my specialty at Chapel Hill. We knew just a couple of people in Winston-Salem. But when we were thinking about moving here, the trees were a big selling point.” We step onto a stone patio with outdoors chairs and a sofa. Like the front yard, the area is dappled with shade. There are lush Australian tree ferns in pots. “We first saw them in New Zealand,” Brown recalls. “After we planted them, we used to be able to winter them in our greenhouse out back. But now they’re so large, we have to keep them in the greenhouse at Reynolda Gardens.” The main source of shade for the patio is a big tree close to the house. Brown points out a Princeton elm that replaced another tree, which fell against the house during a storm. “Trees can be quite an expensive avocation, you know?” he says. The damage to the house was repaired, and the new tree was set in place. “The Princeton elm is a hybrid — a cross between the American elm and the Chinese elm that’s resistant to Dutch elm disease, which killed so many of the elms in the Midwest.” Beyond the patio is a wide expanse of lawn. Four or five men are hard at work with trimmers, blowers, rakes and pruning shears. “For my granddaughter’s birthday party this after-
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noon,” Brown explains. “I used to do a lot of the work myself, dragging hoses here and there to water. But I was a younger man then.” Suddenly, a splash of red attracts my attention. It’s a brightly painted red-and-white structure with a gracefully curved roof at the edge of the lawn. “A pagoda?” I ask. “Actually, it’s a Japanese tea house,” Brown replies. “There was a company that sold building kits, and my wife and I fell in love with the design.” The company that sold the kits went out of business, which didn’t stop the Browns from building one on their own. “The bells at the end of the beams are to ward off evil spirits. It’s a place to serve tea, for relaxation and meditation.” Brown, however, reflects, “My daughter doesn’t share our love for the tea house’s color. So when we had her wedding here, we had to hide it with a tent.” Near the tea house is a large evergreen shrub. “Loquat,” Brown says. “It’s unusual for around here, or in the States, for that matter, though it’s common in China and Japan. Blooms in the fall. We have to cover it with a canvas tarp every winter to protect it.” He smiles as we move on. “Much as I love trees, I have to have a bush. That’s a liberty holly,” Brown says. “We must have 10 or 15 different types of holly on the property. I think of the place as an arboretum, rather than a garden. I like to get people talking about trees, thinking about trees.” “Now there,” he points. “That’s a Japanese tree lilac — Syringa reticulata. It didn’t bloom for the first 10 years. Remember what I said about trees teaching patience? And here’s a Japanese persimmon. As you can see, its fruit is quite large.” We pass a massive water oak with a weeping hemlock growing beneath its canopy. I notice metal badges with the Latin names inscribed near most of the specimen trees. “Yes, it’s always better to have the Latin names when you’re trying to get a specific plant,” Brown notes. “The common names can vary widely.” We come upon a small garden with formal beds. There are boxwood, herbs, peonies and a lovely espaliered apple tree with green fruit. “This garden is my wife, Patty’s,” Brown says. “We put it in 20 years ago. We don’t always agree on plants, so we sort of divide up the property. She has the areas closest to the house, and is content to leave the rest to me.” Before us is a wide oval of lawn, and at its center, one of the largest oak trees I’ve ever seen. A comfortablelooking wooden bench girds its trunk. “A nice place to sit and read,” Brown observes. “A neighbor was planning to sell this property for building lots, and we decided to buy the land, largely to save this tree. It’s a post oak, a relative of the white oaks in front of the house. There were other native trees in Spring 2017
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here we were able to save, too. It was all overgrown, just a jungle of mess.” There are stepping stones around the perimeter of the lawn. As we walk, Brown peppers me with information. “A Chinese parasol tree,” he says. “Wonderful fragrance, but it’s now considered an invasive species. I planted that one twenty years ago. This is a dove tree (Davidia involucrata). Red blossoms in spring, but big white bracts grow down from the blooms. They flutter in the breeze, so from a distance they look like white doves perched in the tree. Hence the name. Some people call it the ‘handkerchief tree.’ Same principle. That’s a pomegranate over there. Here, ostrich ferns.” He continues: “This is a seven-sons bush. Clusters of seven white flowers when it blooms, red berries in fall. A Japanese angelica tree. Cream-colored blossoms, sharp spines on the trunk and branches. And this, the monkey puzzle tree.” We gaze upon an odd-looking evergreen, a maze of fierce-looking, tightly-
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packed, spiky leaves on thick branches. According to writer Alan Mitchell, when the plant was imported to England in the mid-19th century, an observer is said to have commented, “It would puzzle a monkey to climb that,” and the common name stuck. Next we pass a coral bark Japanese maple, a Korean sweetheart tree and a Japanese hardy orange. Seeing the 2-inch spikes bristling among the citrus’ leaves, it’s easy to understand why the Japanese hardy orange is sometimes called the “Crown of Thorns.” I’m scribbling notes, trying to keep up. There are natives scattered in as well — hickory, poplar, and an enormous mulberry tree. “This is Japanese umbrella pine, and here is Emmenopterys henryi. See? The bark is like a cherry tree. It produces beautiful blossoms,” Brown says, moving quickly. “This is paper bark maple. It’s one of my favorites; the bark comes off in big sheets, like parchment. This is Japanese cat leaf maple. This one is Parotia persica, commonly called Persian ironwood. Isn’t the mottled bark Spring 2017
extraordinary? This is lacebark pine, and this is dawn redwood. Its genus dates from the time of the dinosaurs.” Among these extraordinary trees are more natives — small leaf linden, white horse chestnut, pawpaw, hickory, big leaf magnolia, shagbark hickory and chestnut oak. Then we come to Brown’s castor aralia (Kalopanax septemlobus). One of the dominant trees in northeastern Asia, a single plant was first sent in 1881 to Harvard University’s Arnold Arboretum — where Brown first saw a specimen. He planted this tree, and most of the other specimens on our tour, as a seedling. “I love to see how they grow,” he says. “See how their characteristics change.” Mature castor aralia trees can reach a height of 100 feet. Younger trees like Brown’s bristle with sharp, symmetrically spaced spines, or “prickles,” on the trunk. Its leaves, featuring five to seven lobes, are thick and clustered. “I suppose this is my favorite,” Brown says, smiling as he steps back, shading
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his eyes as he looks up to admire the tree’s growth. “It fools a lot of the experts who try to identify it.” I scribble a few more notes. “I should let you get ready for your granddaughter’s party,” I say. Brown smiles, and we shake hands. For a moment, we both look back at the 4 acres we’ve just walked, resplendent with living things. As Brown walks me to my car, he pauses for a moment, studying the top of a big white oak tree across the road in a neighbor’s yard. “See how the crown of that tree is losing leaves?” he asks. “That’s not good.” He shakes his head. “They always need looking after, don’t they?” h
Ross Howell Jr. is a sometimes-successful gardener and author of the historical novel Forsaken, a finalist for the Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction and nominee for the Library of Virginia Literary Award.
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A S l i c e of
Burgundy
in Stoney Creek Artist Dana Holliday custom paints a mural for
Francophiles Sharon and Tom James
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By Cynthia Adams • Photographs by Amy Freeman
haron and Tom James didn’t like the idea of retirement, per se, but as they left their corporate lives, opted instead for a grand rearrangement. This was a rearrangement with a stated purpose: to pursue joie de vivre. Both agreed to retool and reboot, and they knew exactly how they would do it — by living in two residences, one on each side of the Atlantic. So, Tom, once a corporate executive, is now a financial adviser and an assistant professor at High Point University. Sharon, formerly a hospital administrator in Chapel Hill, travels internationally with a firm that accredits hospitals worldwide. The Jameses rearranged their work lives in order to summer in Burgundy, France. For a few months each year, Ancy le Franc is a refuge that affords them this luxury. Their ancient Burgundian townhouse, filled with French antiques and treasures, is a traditional 18th-century village house. It most expresses the couple’s mutual admiration for culture and history. “From Ancy le Franc you have easy access to an embarrassment of cultural, architectural, gastronomic and spiritual riches,” the Jameses explain in an online vacation rental post. “As the famous food writer Mireille Johnstone has written, ‘The pre-Roman crypts, Roman ruins, monasteries, fortified cities, castles and Roman and Gothic cathedrals still seem to grow out of the land according to some natural law.’” In short, it was nothing like Stoney Creek, where their permanent home backs up to a golf course. Five years into their experiment in life rearrangement, the Jameses discovered a way to import a bit of Burgundy to Whitsett, thanks to the talents of artist and muralist Dana Holliday. While working abroad for various large corporations, Tom had made frequent business trips to France and Italy. He scoured for a home. Approximately an hour south of Paris, he found Ancy le Franc was accessible and attuned to a different pace. Here was a
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place where things stopped during the lunch hour and villagers enjoyed a table wine, or vin de pays, with bread, butter, radishes and pâté. Ancy was also a place where the wine fields were an easy drive away, and where golden fields of mustard grew — the very scenery that dazzles viewers during the Tour de France. Once the Jameses discovered the townhouse, “We completed the purchase in August of 2002,” recalls Sharon. It still features a slate roof, stone flooring on the first level, a restored limestone fireplace and original beams. It was even chosen as a featured home on the Fine Living Channel television series “Around the World in 80 Homes.” The rusticity of the place was enchanting for them both. And as an avid collector, Sharon was excited by the variety and access to French antiques, especially furniture, pewter and faience. Tom, already fluent in French, spent part of a summer with Sharon in Nice in 2013, while they took an intensive conversational French course. Both were besotted with France. Here in Ancy, as their entry at vrbo.com, a vacation rental site, says, “you have a recipe for the perfect escape to one of the most ancient and beautiful regions of France.” Although the village is compact, it is large on charm and everything is within an easy walk. There are boulangeries, butcher shops, restaurants, a bar and grill, wine bar, a newsstand and bookshop, and a village park. During the Tour de France, support teams for the famous pelotons had sped right past their windows. Better yet, the townhouse lies within the shadow of an exquisite Renaissance château. The Château d’Ancy le Franc, with its architectural beauty and manicured grounds, is a short walk away. The Burgundy Canal is mere minutes from the Jameses’ doorstep. “Watching the boats on the canal or walking and bike riding on the renovated tow path is a favorite pastime of our guests,” says Sharon. The Jameses would return in August to their traditional neighborhood in Stoney Creek and resume their work lives. Their Spring 2017
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suitcases were filled with tokens of their summer life, such as antique linens picked up at brocantes and a few French toiletries and wines. Yet the Jameses couldn’t walk outside their door, turn right and stroll to the canal, or visit the bakery for a baguette. Enter an O.Henry magazine article on the work of artist Dana Holliday, who is also a professional muralist. Last spring, Sharon James began to turn the article over in her mind and reached out to Holliday. She had always imagined a mural in her dining room, which already features a striking Louis Philippe mirror. Now she began to think about what that mural might provide — a bit of France permanently brought home to the States. Sharon felt Holliday could help her achieve her goal. She contacted the muralist last May, just before leaving for their annual French idyll. The artist and the Jameses had a conversation, getting a firmer sense of how the project could proceed. “First I met with Sharon and saw her living space and went over how much area she wanted covered,” says Holliday, “and what accessories would remain, and which ones to work around. For example, their huge mirror and the fancy French barometer.” Working with sketching paper, Holliday prepared a virtual layout of the mural. “It took me a day to sketch and I painted her a sample on canvas with colors that would be used in the painting.” The mural sample itself was an instant hit, and Sharon framed it for her home back in France. The Jameses suggested they would provide pictures of favorite French scenes so that the muralist could incorporate them. In the interim, Holliday would begin her preparations and review photos as the couple shared them from France. They took pictures with their cellphone, one during a hot air balloon ride, and others Dana Holliday, Sharon and Tom James of Ancy and beyond. Holliday sketched them into the design. How difficult was it to synthesize those in a realistic way? “The village they live in is right in front of the Château d’Ancy,” says Holliday. “I wanted to put their home in but not the whole village. Getting the perspective and placement were tricky.” It was a large project, but hardly Holliday’s largest. She has completed a 30foot mural in downtown Thomasville. Working through the logistics, Holliday plotted how the mural would work dimensionally, and wrap around the room. “I also had to show the backside of the Château and the Burgundy River flowing through. That’s the fun part of creating the illusion. Another biggie is making sure I set it up so it can be seen properly. For instance, there are two doorways (in the dining room) and it’s like reading a book for me. There has to be a flow of view.” Sharon left Holliday a house key so she could begin work during their absence. “She was out of the country a lot,” the artist recalls, “and I had to rely on my gut instincts. It was a very personal mural, so I left the last third incomplete until they returned.” Once fully worked out conceptually, the entire mural required eight days of painting. “It is monochromatic,” but Holliday says in order to achieve the end result, she mixed and matched about six color tones. “I essentially used the wall color base and mixed that with varying umbers and ochres.” Spring 2017
“It is reminiscent of Zuber wallpaper. It is quiet yet so beautiful,” says Sharon. “Most of these images are ones we had photographed and sent to Dana. For us, this is what makes it special. She even put in Angora goats, horses and Charolais cattle that are typical of the area, so they bring back memories of places, friends, or things we have done.” What did Holliday like best about the mural once completed? “It’s subtle yet striking feeling. Most of all that Sharon and Tom loved it! That’s the most rewarding.” Sharon praises the muralist in turn. “She exceeded all of my expectations,” says Sharon. “Tom said it was one of the most fun and rewarding projects we have done in the house.” Last fall, a group of 20 friends were invited for a French-inspired cocktail party, complete with pâtés, French cheeses and wines, to see the completed mural. It drew admiring reactions from guests, many of whom were well-traveled and had lived abroad themselves. Jack Hull, for one, is High Point resident and former antiques dealer. “He once taught interior design at Old Miss, Radford and Old Salem,” says Sharon. Hull called it “extremely well done” and toasted his longtime friends, the hosts. “He liked the placement of the images, the fact that it was wellconceived in relation to where you were viewing it. He especially liked the execution of the trees and how they lent a perspective,” says Sharon. Todd Nabors, who works for Thayer-Coggin furniture, and holds a fascination for spaces that reflect the passions and personalities of their owners, commented to me in a later email, “This room was already beautifully appointed with fine antique furniture and silver, but the murals make dining in this room a truly special experience.” He goes on to observe how “the rich taupe color takes a cue from the grisaille tones of period, French paper by Zuber, but the finely rendered imagery of hot air balloons drifting over the Renaissance style château at the heart of the village of Ancy le Franc transport the viewer into the charming landscape of the owners’ summer residence. It’s a magical effect.” As for the woman of the hour, Holliday arrived from High Point, where she was racing to complete murals for furniture clients in the run-up to the furniture market. Holliday joked about emptying the Jameses pantry while working there. “I was staying onsite and working through lunches. The starving artist!” In response, the Jameses playfully presented Holliday with a can of mixed nuts, set off with a festive bow. Later, in seriousness, Sharon sought the words to express the pleasure she takes in the artwork. “Beautiful. Exquisite. Compares to a rare French wallpaper, except this is much better!” says Sharon. “It really does add so much to the dining room, and I love its simplicity overall. I can discover new things I missed just by standing and gazing at it for some time. And, now, we feel as if we are never far from France and Ancy le Franc!” h C y nthia Adams is a contributing editor for O.Henry. When she went to Ancy le Franc, she had to settle for a Tour de France flag and some fridge magnets as remi n de r s of he r t ri p . Seasons • Style & Design 59
WhenWood Speaks For Greensboro restorers Ted Keaton and son, magic happens when old furniture is brought back to life
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By Jim Dodson • Photographs by Bert VanderVeen
he rugged cherry bed is old, reportedly once belonging to the household of my maternal West Virginia grandmother, Margaret. It is a nicked and scratched pineapple poster bed that came my way about two decades ago. As befits a family heirloom from another time, the old bed had already traveled far but was destined to journey much farther in my company — from Carolina to Georgia — for seven years before rambling to the snow country of Maine. There, it served the noble purpose, among other things, as my daughter, Maggie’s, childhood bed until she left for college, later following her to Brooklyn, where it filled the smallest bedroom in all of Christendom before finally making its way home to Greensboro a few years back. By this time, as most material things and people do, the bed was showing the wear of the road, giving out in the form of an iron flange that wiggled free from its mooring in a side rail, a factor that soon consigned the handsome old thing to the dust of the garage. Not long ago, however, I decided it was high time to restore this link to our family’s past and began asking around about local restoration experts. I was pleased to learn there are at least half a dozen skilled restorers in the Triad, possibly the happy effect of the late furniture industry’s dominance in the region. The name that kept cropping up consistently belonged to the Gate City’s Ted Keaton and son, Ted Junior. Thus, on a late winter afternoon, I dropped by the Keatons’ longtime shop at the corner of North Church and Pisgah Road to investigate what might be done about Miss Margaret’s old poster bed. Keaton’s cozy shop, just 1,200 square feet in size, is an oldfashioned place rife with scents of sawdust and seasoned wood, glue and hardware, hearking to a golden age of carpentry when people made things by hand and cherished the workmanship. The afternoon I appeared, Ted Senior’s longtime assistant of 34 years, Jack Latham, had just finished work on a walnut occasional chair, circa 1860, that he’d meticulously taken apart, scraped every joint, refinished and glued back together. It sat on a nearby table, its vital joints secured by no less than a dozen wood clamps. “It was very wobbly when it came to us,” Jack
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says, explaining that the chair’s original glue was made of animal hide and thus subject to moisture, which inevitably made it brittle and subject to breaking its bond. “We use a super aircraft epoxy that is almost impossible to give. That chair will never wobble again,” he adds with a smile. Near the front of the shop, Ted Junior pauses in his sanding of another gem from the mid-19th century, a chest of drawers that had been damaged in a New Orleans flood, purchased by a customer who hoped to give it as a wedding gift in the spring. His specialty is stripping furniture and removing finishes down to, as in this instance, a rare and beautiful Santo Domingan mahogany. “It was damaged by the flood,” Ted Junior explains, “but clearly worth restoring. The workmanship in those days was so good, when all is said and done, we simply have to take it back its original state and rebuild some of the pieces.” “That’s the kind of wood that speaks to you,” chips in Jack Latham, the shop’s prime woodworker who restored the drawers’ distinctive cock beading by hand. Within days, a 12-step refinishing process would begin under the aegis of the shop’s boss finish expert, Marvin Theodore Keaton, aka. Ted Senior, a youthful 74-year-old who likes to say that he’s on his “second career doing something fun with my hands.” At that moment, Ted Senior is looking over the work on an antique linen press that a customer hopes to transform into a television cabinet. He shows me the unique crotch grain of the press’s doors and explains how the goal was to bring back the beauty of the piece while preserving the whorled beauty of the grain. Ted grew up in Greensboro’s historic Glenwood neighborhood, dreaming of playing in a rock band. “I’m a pure product of the hippie era,” he explains with a winsome grin, noting how he first taught himself to play guitar but soon switched to a Hammond B-3 organ. He eventually formed a band named Kallabash that toured the East Coast for more than a decade and backed up just about any R&B act you’d care to name at the legendary Castaways Club on Greensboro’s east side. You can still see them perform on YouTube “It was a blast, something inside me, something I always wanted to do,” he allows. “But after 10 years on the road, with a wife and two young kids, I decided I needed something a little more predictable and steady. I was always good at fixing things, taking them apart and putting them back together again. Especially wooden things.” His father, after all, the original Ted Keaton Senior, was a beloved “fixer” who worked for prominent families across the north side of the Gate City, repairing everything from stubborn doors to broken chairs. A classic, self-taught “touch-up” artist. That gift was “inside” his son as well. Spring 2017
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Through friends, Ted the Rocker heard that St. Francis Episcopal Church might need a handyman and soon found a regular paying gig working for the late beloved rector of the church, the Rev. Roland Jones. “He passed on not long ago, a truly beloved gentleman,” Ted recalls fondly, explaining that the two shared an interest in woodworking. “I showed him picture frames and headboards I’d made, and he soon had me working all over the church, repairing and refinishing this or that. I loved the job. He made me the church’s ‘property manager,’ which was a fancy name for the simple jobs I did.” It was Rev. Jones, he adds, who convinced him that his talents deserved a wider audience — or, as it were, customer base. “He encouraged me to open my own shop, which I did in 1979, on Battleground Avenue — across from the old Krispy Kreme store.” Fortunately, Ted’s connections with parishioners at St. Francis Church brought him a ready supply of new customers with larger projects in mind — chests to be refinished, broken dowels replaced, family heirlooms of every sort to be restored or simply “refreshed a bit.” Prominent northside patrons like Ruth Wilcox, Joan Bluethenthal, and Joanne and Bill Craft spread the word about Keaton’s handiwork. After three years on his own, Ted hired Jack Latham, who had honed his craft for years in Ohio, and relocated to a larger site on State Street owned by Greensboro realtor and antiques dealer Harry Adams. “That’s where I was able to add a real spray room, the part of the restoration process that really interested me most,” he says, noting the complex system of finishing that begins with color matching and proceeds to a sealer, glaze, additional sealer followed by four coats of lacquer and hand buffing to achieve the proper luster. In 1982, Ted and Jack moved to their current storefront on North Church, formerly a laundromat that was ideal for the kind of hands-on shop the craftsmen needed. By then, oldest son Ted Junior was working part-time with his dad. After completing degrees in business from Liberty University in 1995 and a Master’s in theology two years later, Ted joined his father’s shop, taking over much of the hand-stripping Spring 2017
and sanding process, freeing up his papa to concentrate on the refinish process he’s worked to an art. In addition to a steady stream of customers who heard about their work by word-of-mouth, the Keatons have restored everything from a table that belonged to Stonewall Jackson to the counter at the International Civil Rights Museum. Following a terrible fire at the L. Richardson Preyer Federal Building around the turn of the new millennium, the Keatons were hired to restore much of the woodwork of damaged tables and furniture. “I don’t think there’s a judge’s or lawyer’s table in that building we didn’t have our hands on,” Ted quips. “It was quite a job.” These days, he adds, people who value antiques and well-made vintage furnishing are “furniture spoiled.” By this he means, “Wonderful old pieces are really everywhere these days at consignment stores throughout the Triad — things you can pick up for almost nothing compared to their real value.” Part of this is due, Keaton notes, to an older generation passing along heirlooms and old furniture to children who don’t share their passion for antiques, or who simply have tastes that run toward more modern styles, eschewing wobbly chairs and worn-out hutches. “On the other hand, it’s a great time to pick up great pieces if you’re into antiques. We’re always amazed at the beautiful old pieces people have picked up at auctions or consignment shops and bring to us to restore,” chips in Jack Latham. “But there’s also a lot of fake antiques out there now. The Brits and French in particular have become true artists at making furniture look old. The tipoff is that some of that is made too well,” he adds with a laugh. “Something won’t show any sign of age.” “But whatever it is,” adds the Boss, “we’re happy to work on it and give it new life.” A typical restoration of a chest or table can take anywhere from a week or 10 days to complete, as a rule. Ted Junior estimated that the chest of drawers that survived the flood in New Orleans, for instance, would require about 25 hours worth of work at a cost of anywhere from $600 to $700 dollars. My granny Margaret’s old poster bed, by contrast, simply needed new hardware and perhaps a modest refinishing job — a bargain by any price, it seemed to me, already picturing it in our new guestroom for when the grown-up college girl and her Brooklyn boyfriend come to visit later this spring. h When he isn’t crafting stories, Jim Dodson spends his time restoring old gardens.
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Barn Again
How former Greensboro restaurateur Laura Pearse Griffin and her husband, Mike, once a partner in a Greensboro printing business, reinvented themselves at Chinaberry Farm By Maria Johnson • Photographs by Amy Freeman
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hey wanted something different. A barn, a church, someplace you wouldn’t necessarily think of as a personal space. So when Laura and Mike Griffin went tooling around on a scooter, looking for rural properties, they weren’t looking for your average address. In fact, Laura had espied a farmhouse that she liked. But Mike didn’t. So they asked the real estate agent if he knew of anything more unusual. He pointed them to a listing a few miles away. The property, in the northern Davidson County community of Wallburg, included 9 acres and a fairly new house that was nice but nothing remarkable. But the barn . . . The barn was the hub of a former dairy farm that had belonged to the Motsingers, a family name that’s as common as “Jones” on this Germanic shoulder of the Piedmont. Laura and Mike zipped over to property. Perched by the road, the Depression-era barn slumped as if it were trying to return to the Earth from which it had been raised. Mike tried to slide one of the front doors sideways, but it was stuck, so he tilted it upward from the bottom. He and Laura stuck their heads in. The air smelled like loamy dirt. Daylight leaked in all around. There was evidence of animals other than dairy cows. Mud dauber nests crusted the rafters. A hay hole in the middle of the plank floor opened to the milking barn below, a sort of a walkout basement. “This is it,” said Mike. Spring 2017
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I
t’s funny, says Laura, how you go through different chapters and experiences in life and then, if you’re lucky, you end up where you started: being yourself, the you you always knew. She was the artist. The designer. The one who daydreamed about color and texture. She came by it honestly. Her father was a vice president of Cone Mills Corp., the textile giant that moved the family from New York to Greensboro when Laura was a kid. They lived in the Green Valley neighborhood; they jokingly called it “Gratale Valley,” a nod to the family’s Italian name (grah-TAL-ee). Their home life was spiked with Mediterranean vigor and an appreciation of aesthetics. Laura’s mom had studied fashion design in New York. “They knew what was beautiful,” Laura says of her parents. After graduating from Grimsley High School, Laura started at UNC Wilmington in art. Two years in, her father nixed that plan. She wasn’t competitive enough to make a living in the art world, he thought. So Laura nabbed a science degree from UNCG, and topped it off with an associate degree in radiologic technology from N.C. Baptist Hospital in Winston-Salem (now Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center). Her career tugged her to Charleston, South Carolina, then to Buffalo, New York, with her husband Robert Pearse. A standout soccer and lacrosse player, Robert had earned an English degree from Guilford College, which was nice, but not very edible. He made money by cooking in restaurants, a knack he, too, had come by honestly. His mother had studied cooking at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris. By the time Laura’s radiology career steered them back to Chapel Hill, they could see the bones of a different life: one in restaurants. In Chapel Hill, Robert crossed paths with George Bakatsias, a legendary Greek restaurateur who captained a fleet of highly regarded white-tablecloth establishments. He had his eye on Greensboro, and he knew the people he wanted running the kitchen and the front of the house: Robert and Laura Pearse. The Nicholas — derived from a name that’s common in both the Bakatsias and Pearse families — opened in 1986 and had a short-lived but brilliant life. Tucked into an upper corner of what was then the Forum VI mall in Friendly Center (now an office building called Signature Place), the restaurant set local foodies swooning with dishes such as tamari-glazed flounder, seven-hour duck and beef tournedos. Ironically and wonderfully, The Nicholas was just a few floors away from the very popular and vastly different K&W Cafeteria, which still anchors one corner of the building. “Of course we went to the K&W,” Laura says, detailing every dish that she, Robert and their two sons ordered routinely. “We loved it.” A little more than two years after The Nicholas opened, Bakatsias was out and the Pearses were in as owners. The restaurant assumed a new name, Robert’s, and raced to the head of the local restaurant pack. “Robert really pioneered fine dining in Greensboro. John Batchelor (the News & Record’s restaurant critic) was smitten,” says Laura, who handled everything between the front door and the kitchen: the design of the dining room; the welcoming of weekend customers; the planning of parties. Robert’s had a decent run, four years, before sputtering to a halt as compa-
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nies snipped out corporate credit cards. The Pearses pivoted and opened a smaller, budget-friendly place, The Smoking Dog, which served sandwiches and vegetarian fare near the collegefueled intersection of Walker and Elam avenues. The restaurant fed — and fed on — the crowd that poured out of The Blind Tiger and other nearby bars at closing. Blind Tiger business partners Neil Reitzel and Scott Toben took note and approached the Pearses with an invitation: “Let’s do something better.” The result was Revival Grill, which first occupied a cubbyhole in Quaker Village near Robert’s alma mater and later moved a stone’s throw away to a former videotape rental building. Huge, sophisticated and innovative, Revival Grill had legs. It lasted more than a dozen years, but by 2004, Laura was out. She and Robert had split up. “It was time to move on,” she says. Spring 2017
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ike’s neighbors at Belews Lake, Greensboro’s nearest and dearest watering hole for boaters, wanted him to meet Laura. But they didn’t tell him. So they showed up at Mike’s house with Laura one Sunday morning in 2008. After introductions, Mike, who’d been divorced for a few years, cut to the chase. “So, what’s your deal”” he asked Laura. “Do you have a boyfriend or something?” One of the neighbors stepped in. “Wait, Mike, don’t you have a girl coming up here today?” “Yeah,” said Mike, gesturing to Laura. “But I like her better.” Laura blushed. That was on a Saturday in October. By Monday, Mike had her phone number. By December, he was whisking her to Paris for her birthday. They saw 18 countries in three years, often touring the countryside on motorcycles or scooters that allowed each of them luggage space equal to two shoeboxes. “How many women do you know who would do that?” says Mike. “You can do a lot with black spandex,” Laura explains. “Leggings, short sleeves, long sleeves. You wear your coat.” The thing that united them, Mike says, was curiosity and the courage to follow where question marks led them.
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“We’re so different. I’m a Southern boy. She’s a New Yorker. But we’re really one heart.” A few feet away, Laura nods and wipes away a tear. “We’re kindred spirits,” she says. In a dab of foreshadowing, they were married in a renovated barn at Hanover Park Vineyard in the Yadkin Valley in 2011. Laura’s ex-husband Robert, who operated Bin 33 restaurant and wine bar in downtown Greensboro at that time, prepared the food. “Robert and I remained fans of each other,” says Laura. “He loved Mike.” Robert helped the couple launch a new business, the Kernersville-based Eco Solutions, which buys used cooking oil from restaurants, purifies the oil and sells it to biodiesel manufacturers around the world. With Robert’s help, Laura used her restaurant contacts to line up suppliers for Eco Solutions. The business tapped Mike’s interest in motors and energy efficiency. He’d raced dirt bikes as a kid in Winston-Salem. In the 1970s, he darted around in a VW diesel Rabbit. Packing a degree in chemistry from UNC Chapel Hill, he came to a fork in the career road and took it into a Greensboro printing business, where he worked for most of his adult life. When his stake in the business dissolved, along with his first marriage, he went looking for new adventures. Laura was in the same place. For several years after her divorce, she’d worked as a creative coordinator for wineries and tourist attractions around the state, including Childress Vineyards in Lexington, Silver Coast Winery in Spring 2017
Ocean Isle, and Chinqua-Penn Plantation in Reidsville. She wasn’t long gone from Chinqua-Penn when she met Mike “We both totally reinvented ourselves,” he says.
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hinaberry Farm. That’s what the Griffins call their homestead, which they bought in early 2011. The name comes from the chinaberry tree that stretches its arms wide between the barn and the Griffins’ Cape Cod style home. The barn is the headliner. The new gambrel roof gleams golden-copper. The burgundy walls — fashioned from newly hung German-cut pine siding — absorb the eye, then plank doors punch it with different colors: purple, blue, orange, yellow. “Not many people would get that,” Mike says. The Griffins had plenty of help with the makeover. Laura’s friend Laury Bershad Wright, a textile designer and colorist who lives in Annapolis, Maryland, helped to pick the colors. Handy-folk Howard and Sandy White, of Madison, pitched in to transform the barn’s interior. They cut windows and doors, strung stairs, refreshed lofts, and installed massive architectural pieces – a canvas for Laura’s rustic, eclectic vignettes throughout the barn. Like an expert chef, Laura harmonizes notes — furniture, paintings, ironwork, pottery, fiber, wicker, leather and glass — that might seem disparate to a novice. Spring 2017
“I love putting things together,” she says. “I’m all about the creative process.” A dining table for 12 occupies one corner. A 17-foot-long bar, made by Rick Landreth, of One Way Architectural Salvage and Antiques in King, borders a long wall. A cozy sitting area anchors the middle. Overhead, the skeleton of a rowboat is suspended from the rafters 35 feet above. Laura rescued the wooden bones from a roadside dump near Belews Lake. “I coveted it for three years,” she says. With the barn’s vast airspace comes a predictable chill, which is why most of the building is a three-season space. “The blessing and the curse is that you could never heat this space,” says Mike. The Griffins’ solution? They’ve book-ended the barn with small, heated and cooled living quarters, each topped with a loft. On one end, a French cottage façade — complete with stucco walls, multilight doorway and red tile roof — leads to an efficiency apartment. Another slice of domesticity lies on the other end of the barn: a library that connects to a full kitchen. The library loft harbors more of Laura and Mike’s weekend salvage picks, including a large, flat wooden swing suspended by intricate chains. It was Laura’s surprise gift to Mike for their fifth anniversary, the wood anniversary. “My surprise was that he hung it,” she says, laughing. In addition to hanging the swing securely, Mike made sure its flight path didn’t clear the loft’s railing. The swing story summarizes their relationship: Laura’s the artist who sees the vision; Mike’s the craftsman who makes sure it works. Seasons • Style & Design 69
“He puts a lid on it,” says the kinetic Laura. The hammer-and-saw life is new to Mike, after a period of living in a big house in the suburbs and dressing for the office every day. “This is a different phase of my life,” says Mike, who’s 60. “This is more me.” In addition to working on the barn, he tinkers with his beloved motorcycles. He scratched one goal off his bucket list when he started racing Grand Prix motorcycles. “It’s a 180-mile-an-hour sport, with one knee on the ground,” he says. Laura’s bucket list, he says, is the barn and farm. Before, Laura used her design savvy in restaurant business. Now, she applies her creative muscle at Chinaberry, but there’s a key difference. “I have privacy for the first time in my life,” says the 59-year-old. “I lived in a bubble for 26 years. When you own a restaurant, and you’re hugging and kissing people every night, everybody knows your business.” The barn contains a few nods to Laura’s restaurant past; the botanicallyinspired door pulls came from Revival Grill, courtesy of metalworker Jeff Barbour, who made them and later salvaged them before the restaurant was torn down to make room for a Walmart Neighborhood Market. But that’s as far as the restaurant ripple goes. The Griffins say the barn will be used primarily as a guesthouse and setting for family gatherings. Last June, they hosted a rehearsal dinner for Laura’s son Nick and his bride, Sara.
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Nick’s dad, Robert, attended the party and wedding. He died of heart failure the following month. Recently, several of Robert’s old restaurant friends attended a brunch that Laura and Mike hosted at the barn (see page 72). Laura says the barn will be available to the public as a backdrop for photo events, but she insists that her days of party planning and feeding the masses are over. Now, the only creatures clamoring for food at the farm are the animals that populate the Griffins’ home and barnyard. They include — take a deep breath here — four dogs, three cats, a donkey, a horse, a mini-horse, a mini-parakeet, two roosters, one pig (named Pig Newton), two goats and three sheep (Harris, Tweed and Poplin). “Everybody was looking at me like I was crazy with the fabric names,” says Laura. “But I could go on.” The animals start crying for chow at sun-up. Laura spends two hours every morning feeding and cleaning up after them. Come to think of it, the beasties are not that different from restaurant customers, says Laura. “They walk in hungry, and they want instant gratification,” she says. h Maria Johnson is a contributor to Seasons. She can be reached at ohenrymaria@ gmail.com. Contact the Griffins at chinaberryfarmandbarn@gmail.com.
Spring 2017
Spring 2017
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Brunch in a Barn Four chefs and 20 friends celebrate spring By Jim Dodson • Photographs by Amy Freeman
Tad Engstrom
Lisa Hawley
MJ’s Restaurant & Catering Greensboro
Southern Roots Restaurant Jamestown
L
ike many culinary traditions, the origins of brunch are cloaked in sweet obscurity. Some food historians maintain that the idea of a lavish buffet that artfully blends “breakfast” and “lunch” developed from traditional English hunt breakfasts where everything from Scotch eggs to wild game and sweetbreads were presented to hungry participants. Others insist it developed from cooks who simply wished to sleep in on Sunday mornings. Whichever version you accept, according to Smithsonian magazine, the word first appeared in a 1895 edition of Hunter’s Weekly magazine and included a plea from a noted British foodie to replace the heavy, traditional after-church Sunday meal with lighter fare that would be “talk-compelling and puts you in a good temper, [that] makes you satisfied with yourself and fellow beings [and] sweeps away the worries and cobwebs of the week.” By the 1930s, the concept of “brunch” had infiltrated America too, notably in the form of socialites and movie stars who took up the tradition and added Bloody Marys and mimosas to spice up the menu — prompting top restaurants in major cities to quickly adopt the concept. These days, brunch may be the most versatile form of entertaining with fine food, the ideal way to celebrate everything from the birth of a baby to golden wedding anniversaries, with college graduations to first Communions in between. Not long ago, Seasons was pleased to find itself invited to a very special
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Brad Semon
Painted Plate Catering Greensboro
Trey Prescott
J. Pepper’s Southern Grille Kernersville
brunch in a gloriously restored Moravian barn on Chinaberry Farm in the Davidson County village of Wallburg. The spectacular brunch was equal parts weekend debut party for the historic barn — meticulously restored by hosts Mike Griffin and his Renaissance wife, Laura, who orchestrated the food and decorations amid salvaged artifacts such as a script for a Victorian stage play. She also planned the meal for 20 or so friends old and new, highlighted by the culinary brilliance of four acclaimed Triad chefs — something of a reunion in memory of her late husband, Chef Robert Pearse (see page 64), but mainly a celebration of spring. As the mingling guests nibbled on cheese straws and baked goods supplied by Winston-Salem’s Camino Bakery, and sipped on an outstanding chardonnay or superb Pinnacle blend from the Childress Winery, or a robust Bloody Mary poured by the event’s genial celebrity barkeep, High Point architect Peter Freeman (the recipe belongs to his wife, Amy, Seasons’s gifted photographer), the chefs presented their culinary magic at stations around the barn. What would any Southern brunch be without shrimp and grits? Brad Semon from Greensboro’s Painted Plate Catering served his own version of the Southern classic, which ranks high among the favorites of his devoted customers — and will undoubtedly find its way to his new Cadillac Service Garage event space opening this spring in downtown Greensboro. Continuing a theme, Tad Engstrom, executive chef at popular MJ’s Restaurant & Catering in the Gate City’s Guilford College neighborhood, presented pimiento cheese grits, quail filets with raspberries and the most delicious Spring 2017
Laura and Mike Griffin, and Sara Pearse
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seasoned collards this trencherman has ever eaten. Trey Prescott from J. Pepper’s Southern Grille in Kernersville delighted the sweet tooth and child in each of the guests with an extraordinary bread pudding French toast dish that featured candied pecans drizzled with a heavenly maple syrup — made from a Foothills favorite, People’s Porter. It is easily the most popular brunch item on the menu at 3-year-old J. Pepper’s, Prescott reports, and made from a recipe he got from his own mama, Sharyn. Perhaps the most ambitious brunch dish — certainly the most exquisitely conceived — was provided by Lisa Hawley of Jamestown’s acclaimed Southern Roots Restaurant, an omelette gateau she learned many years ago from a fellow Southern chef that requireds no less than 40 different omelettes stacked and filled with fresh spinach, English cheddar, roasted tomato, blue and Parmesan cheeses layered and baked into a golden egg cake. “It’s pretty labor intensive,” Hawley conceded, “and I hadn’t tried it in years. But I had a hunch it might be perfect for a brunch in a barn.” Her hunch was more than correct. The egg cake dazzled guests with its beautiful architecture and rich taste, disappearing quickly. “A party like this could never happen without the help of good friends,” Laura Griffin noted as the socializing and eating reached peak levels and warming rays of sunlight filled the barn’s beautiful curated spaces.
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Griffin was quick to acknowledge her pals Greg Johns and Terri Christian of Childress Vineyards for their contributions; Triad designers Bobby Craddock and Donna Jordan for assisting with decorations and design ideas; and longtime friends Patti and Chris Morrison from Kernersville for introducing Twin City songstress Holly Brown to her guests. Brown’s lovely background music floated down from the barn’s upper reaches throughout the event. “Something like this really does take a village, or at least a family of talented friends coming together to celebrate,” Griffin added, alluding to her late husband, the aforementioned Chef Robert, whose son Nick Pearse and bride Sara held their wedding rehearsal dinner party in the Barn at Chinaberry Farm last June. Nick, a line cook at Greensboro’s 1618 Downtown, was home studying for his nursing degree that morning but, Sara, a sports therapist who counts The Swarm among her local clients, was present to help close the circle of good will. “Nick and I saw this barn come together over the past five years,” she mused as the event began to wind down, explaining how, in the spirit of proper Southern tradition, she and Nick served fried catfish, Budweiser and Cheerwine at the barn’s christening. “It was such fun; everyone loved it. But this brunch is a step further in the barn’s new life — not to mention Laura’s and Mike’s.” Taking a last bite of Trey Prescott’s amazing bread pudding French toast, she added with a smile, “And what a perfect way to welcome back spring.” h Spring 2017
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Visit the gift shop at Salem Kitchen for an extensive selection of tables linens, featuring April Cornell. We offer a variety of gift items including La Cadeaux melamine, Caldrea products and Nouvelle candles. Check out the wine shop while you’re visiting.
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Spring 2017
life&home
The Language of Home
From the Terrace The ideal spot for stargazing — and napping, too By Noah Salt
“Terrace” noun derived from Middle French, 1505–15, meaning “platform.”
1. A flat area made of stone or grass next to a building where people can sit. 2. An open architectural platform, sometimes walled, projecting from the side of a structure, apartment or building. For many of us, there is no place like a terrace for having good views and dreamy thoughts. In the middle 1820s, Lady Julia Gordon thought so much of her classical terrace at her coastal villa on the Isle of Wight, she made sketches of the beguiling view of the coast and sent them to her art teacher, who happened to be one J.M.W. Turner, the leading English Romanticist and arguably England’s most famous landscape artist. Turner’s subsequent painting, View from the Terrace of a Villa at Niton Isle of Wight from Sketches by a Lady, made its debut at the Royal Academy in 1826, and is believed to have simultaneously set off a public demand for similar terraces and a passion for Italian gardening. Thousands of years before terraces served a highly useful social function to English and French aristocrats, ancient farmers from Asia to the Andes developed terraces for agricultural use on steep hillsides — making the most of shallow soil and enabling better irrigation of crops. The mythical Hanging Gardens of Babylon were said to be built on an artificial mountain created by a series of graduated terraces, and Julius Caesar’s fatherSpring 2017
in-law was believed to have designed special terraces to provide a pleasant view of the Bay of Naples from the family estate, Villa of the Papyri (which had the unfortunate location of Herculaneum, beneath Mount Vesuvius). As a word whose root derives from Latin “terra,” for earth, terraces soon became all the rage among the Roman patrician classes, something no decent villa owner could possibly be without. In America, great family homes such as Asheville’s Biltmore House often feature bespoke architectural terraces that soften their classic edges and encourage everyone to step out and admire the view. The modern “patio,” in fact, is little more than a radically scaled-back version of the full-blooded architectural terrace that wooed J.M.W. Turner. Whatever else may be true, terraces hold a unique place in our homemaking hearts, a way of inviting nature into our busy lives. As a result, sunsets go well with terraces. So do sunrises. Ditto wedding proposals and anniversary toasts, or dances in the moonlight. Simple napping on a spring afternoon also rates high on the scale of popular terrace doings. For years this writer had a delightful stone terrace behind an old, historic house he and his bride rented for a time. It was shaded by a pair of well-behaved Savannah holly trees that provided not only sweet refuge (and a superb napping place) from the summer sun, but also just about the most exquisite place ever for stargazing on a clear night. For the record, my dog liked it, too. We both miss that terrace. h
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life&home
Our Towns
Barbecue and Beyond How Lexington is writing its next chapter By Leah Hughes
O
Photographs by Sam Froelich
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n a chilly Tuesday afternoon, people bundle up as they walk along downtown Lexington’s sidewalks. They duck into Conrad & Hinkle and emerge with brown paper sacks of pimiento cheese and beef tenderloin for tonight’s supper. They climb the steps to The Candy Factory, pull open the heavy door and disappear. They reappear holding red and white striped bags of Red Bird candy, sucking in their cheeks as they enjoy a soft peppermint puff. They window shop, admiring the Carhartt jackets and toboggans that line the front of the Army Navy Store. Inside, Frankie Nance calls them by name. He asks how they’ve been and if there’s anything he can help them find among the racks of overalls and jackets and gloves. Robin Bivens watches the busyness from her window on the corner of West Center and North Main streets. As the executive director of the Lexington Tourism Authority & Visitor Center, Bivens’ job is to encourage tourists to visit the city where she was born and raised. Like many other Piedmont municipalities, Lexington depended heavily on furniture and textiles several decades ago. But textiles began to decline in the ’70s and furniture in the ’80s, and by the end of the 20th century, Lexington couldn’t rely on its industries of the past to carry it into the new millennium. “There was a time in the ’70s when every family was directly connected to furniture,” Bivens says. “But it’s hard to find a family with a member working in furniture today.” Lexington needed to redefine itself. But it didn’t have to look far.
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In 1916, local farmer Sid Weaver began coming downtown on “court days,” setting up tents and pit-cooking pork shoulders. When court recessed for lunch, Weaver sold his barbecue. In the late 1930s, the first brick-and-mortar barbecue pits were constructed across Center Street from the old courthouse. In 2015, when City Hall underwent renovations, workers discovered the original pits behind a closet. Today the preserved pits serve as a mini-museum of Lexington-style barbecue. Fifteen barbecue restaurants now operate in Davidson County, and six are located within the city of Lexington. That barbecue heritage has become a talking point for Bivens and other town leaders. “Let’s face it; people love to eat,” Bivens says. “The more we put the story out there, the more people came to eat, so we started telling our other stories, too.” They told about the sisters who run The Candy Factory and how the Piedmont Candy Company makes that signature Red Bird candy right down the street. They told about Lee Hinkle, a third-generation shop owner who boosts sales at his small grocery store by promoting his grandmother’s pimiento cheese. They told about Lanier Hardware, which began in 1940 and takes up nearly an entire block of Main Street. They proudly laid claim to famous native sons Bob Timberlake and Richard Childress. And gradually all those people who came to eat barbecue lingered in Lexington a little longer, to visit its wineries and galleries, to shop in its stores and stay in its hotels. In 2015, visitors spent $155 million in Davidson County, of which Lexington is the county seat, a 3.5 percent increase since 2014. “Where we’re excelling is telling our story, and it’s authenSpring 2017
life&home tic,” says Mayor Newell Clark. “We’ve been really fortunate to have a history to leverage.” Clark’s family is part of that history. His grandfather Ardell Lanier founded Lanier Hardware. When Lanier died in 2014, the family held a viewing inside the hardware store, and 1,000 people filed through. (See
the 2016 Fall/Winter issue of Seasons.) Clark — a sporty, stylish spark plug of a city official — graduated from UNC Wilmington and then spent 15 years on the West Coast. He liked California, but he didn’t feel the same connection he has here. He came home 10 years ago and is now in his third term as mayor. “Lexington’s a good size,” he says. “We’re a city, but we can still get our arms around it.” A large part of that authentic story that Bivens and Clark promote lies on a pieshaped piece of property where Interstate 85 Business and U.S. Highway 64 split. Lexington Barbecue sits atop a small hill, flagging down passersby with the aroma of wood-tinged pork from its smokers. Its parking spaces are some of the most sought-after property in town. At 3 p.m. on a Thursday, the lot is twothirds full. Rick Monk is midway through his 11th hour on the job, and he’s as genuinely happy as someone sitting on a sun-soaked beach. “I woke up one day, and I realized that I’ve got it made,” Monk says. “I have everything in the world. I look forward to coming to work every day.” Monk and his staff cook 6,000–7,000 pounds of meat a week to feed as many as 7,000 customers. The line often stretches from the dining room, runs along the lunch counter, makes a U-turn at the cash register, snakes through the double glass doors and extends out into the parking lot. People drive miles and miles for chopped pork with bits of crispy brown skin, bottomless baskets of hot hushpuppies, and sweet tea poured over soft-cubed ice. They also drive to see Rick Monk, standing behind the counter, overseeing a legacy his father started in 1962. “I still preach the Gospel of Wayne Monk,” Rick Monk says. “My way to get through to people is through food.” Also behind the counter, you’ll meet a third-generation barbecue man: Nathan Monk, Rick’s son. A younger generation of Lexington citizens is emerging not only to tell the story of Lexington’s past, but also to write its next chapter. On the corner of South Main and East Center streets, diagonally across
from the Visitors Center, Chris Phelps runs a music venue called High Rock Outfitters. It draws patrons from Greensboro and Winston-Salem for live music and craft beer four to five nights a week. Phelps also directs Davidson County’s Tourism-Recreation Investment Partnership, a nonprofit with a mission to increase public access to the county’s natural resources through parks and trails and other public spaces. Down in the up-and-coming Depot District, inside an old furniture plant, two North Davidson High School alumni and their business partners established the production facility for Bull City Ciderworks. They moved their largeformat production from Durham to Lexington last year, due in part to their personal connections but also because of the city’s proximity to Interstate 85 and U.S. Highways 64 and 52. The connectivity makes it simpler to ship their six-pack bottles of hard cider to more markets. “We’ve had a great reception from the community,” says John Clowney, one of Bull City’s Davidson County natives. “We’ve tried to get involved and not just be an idle observer of the community, but to be an involved business.” The new generation of Lexington entrepreneurs seems to have taken notes from the ones who came before them. They listened to the story that Lexington natives, such as Bivens and Clark and Monk, have been telling. And they’re writing their own narrative, fueled by creativity and innovation and a tray or two of chopped pork. h Leah Hughes writes from her family farm in Jackson Creek, a rural community in Randolph County. She makes frequent trips to nearby Lexington for chocolate, pimiento cheese and barbecue. Want to know (and see) more about Lexington? Consider dropping by the circa 1858, handsome Greek Revival Old Davidson County Courthouse right on the downtown square. It’s been converted into the Davidson County Historical Museum, which tells the county’s and city’s story via artifacts and photographs. And don’t miss the courtroom upstairs, where the area’s finest artist, Chip Holton, has brought back to life a famous murder trial with a series of dramatic courtroom cutouts of the judge, the jury, attorneys and a defendant. Info: www.co.davidson.nc.us or (336) 242-2035.
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Gibsonville Antiques & ColleCtibles Full of History, Antiques & Charm
106 E. Railroad Ave, Gibsonville, NC • (336) 446-0234 Downtown Gibsonville behind the Red Caboose
GibsonvilleAntiques.com • Mon-Sat 10-6 & Sun 1-5
Spring 2017
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HomeWords
Chain Saw Massacre A would-be woodsman bears the unkindest cut of all By David Claude Bailey Illustration by Romey Petite
F
or decades, whenever I needed a tree cut down, my friends have been happy to demonstrate their lumberjack skills, especially if rewarded with ample quantities of craft beer. But I’ll admit I’ve always been jealous of their Swedish Husqvarna and German Stihl chain saws. At the same time, I noticed how high maintenance they were. When I moved out in the country, I thought my cousin Bill, who can wield a chain saw like the character Ash in The Evil Dead and Evil Dead II movies, would be delighted to hear I was going to finally buy myself a chain saw. “Bailey, you’re so clumsy you’ll cut off both your ears,” he said. “If you’ve got one in your sweaty little hands, I want to be in the next county.” My wife, Anne, standing by, chimed in with similar sentiments, as if she were the Greek prophetess Cassandra predicting a series of tragic dismemberments. “Maybe I’ll let you try my electric chain saw under close supervision,” Bill said. And so he did. Clad in my red-and-black lumberjack shirt — and wearing steel-toed boots and thick leather gloves at Bill’s insistence — I sawed away. No gas or oil to mix. No fumes. No pulling on a cord until you’re blue in the face. Light as a feather. “I’m going to buy me an electric chain saw,” I announced. “Great,” Bill replied. “Just let me get across the county line first.” Cassandra groaned. Online research is itself a double-edged blade; I was overwhelmed with choices until I found Chainsawjournal.com and saw some familiar and very virile-sounding names: Remington, Worx, Oregon PowerNow, Makita, Sun Joe. Sun Joe? Could I really tell Bill I’d bought a lime-green Sun Joe chain saw? (Sun Joe is a division of Snow Joe, which got its start selling snow blowers for under $100.) I love to read reviews online, especially negative ones. And for every brand there were plenty: “Problem right out of the box,” one disgruntled chain saw buyer said. “Piece of junk,” someone said. “This product broke after the first use,” was common. “Tensioner requires more attention than a high school drama queen,” one creative critic penned. By contrast, Sun Joe got great reviews. One woman did grouse a little about the operator’s manual, but after all, who reads those? Sun Joe showed up on my doorstep two days later. Anne pointed out that I’d actually bought a Saw Joe, assembly required. Ten minutes later, when she heard my grumbling turn into curses, she quietly sidled up and did what she has often done when I tried to assemble toys in the wee hours of Christmas morning: She read the manual. She leafed through the first seven pages that focused single-mindedly on how to retain one’s 20 digits while avoiding electrocution. “Saw Joe says not to use him in the rain or in wet locations,” she read. “Saw Joe says to keep all body parts away from saw while operating.” “Yeah, yeah, I know all that. Does Chain Saw Joe say how to put him together?” I asked. He did. First I threaded the chain onto the cutting bar, looping its links over the gear sprocket just as the drawing Anne pointed out to me showed. Following her read-out-loud instructions I then tightened the chain via the chain-tensioner screw. I depressed the safety lock button and
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pulled the trigger. Chain Saw Joe said, “RRRWowwwrrrrrr.” I said, “Hah!” “Saw Joe says to add chain oil,” Anne said. I filled the chamber, put on my lumberjack gear, and ambled out to the woodpile. Halfway there, it became apparent that what I needed was an extension cord, a loooong extension cord. No problem. I had collected no less than five faded orange extension cords over the years — one I inherited from Dad; another I found on the side of the road; a third I saw in a construction skip when a neighbor’s house was being remodeled. It’s even possible I might have broken with my cheapskate tendencies and bought one or two of them, years ago. I plugged one into another while Anne read aloud a note about how Chain Saw Joe recommended polarized Underwriters’ Laboratory 14-gauge extension cords. Yeah, so what? I pulled the trigger to drown out her droning — and nothing happened. I unplugged the cords and tried them one at a time until I got back to the outlet. Nothing. I grudgingly drove 12 miles to my friendly hardware store, and bought a 50-foot 12-gauge (better than a 14, said the man in the hardware store) for almost as much as I paid for the saw and drove back. Nothing. Cassandra diligently walked me through the troubleshooting chart in the operator’s manual. Still nothing. I called Sun Joe. “Yep,” said Ronnie. “Yep . . . Yep . . . Yep.” After I’d wound down, he said, “I think I know the problem. Pick up the chain saw by the handle.” With my right hand I grasped the bright green handle, saying, “All right.” “Do you see another handle?” he asked. “Yep,” I said, “right in front of the first handle.” “Well, that’s not a handle,” Ronnie said. “It’s the safety chain brake lever. Pull it back toward you and see if it clicks.” “Yep,” I said, as it clicked. At Ronnie’s suggestion, I plugged Chain Saw Joe in and pulled his trigger. He said, “RRRWowwwrrrrrr.” I told Ronnie I felt dumb. He said that other people had called with the same problem and not to beat myself up. “It really ought to be on the troubleshooting chart. At least you read the manual,” he said, and began telling me about all the idiots who tried to operate a tool as dangerous as a chain saw without even opening the manual. “Right,” I said, “and thanks for the help, but I really gotta go and cut up some firewood before it gets cold.” h O.Henry’s editor at large, David Claude Bailey, counts his blessings — along with his fingers and toes after using Chain Saw Joe — at Thacker Dairy in Whitsett. Spring 2017
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