Valentine's Dinner

 

Tarboro is a small town in eastern North Carolina on the banks of the Tar River. From the early 18^th century until the Civil War, the town was a busy commercial port, the farthest a ship could travel up river before reaching the impassable fall line at Rocky Mount. At the heart of the town is the only surviving town commons in the eastern US outside of Boston. A well-preserved collection of antebellum and Victorian era homes fills the original town limits with historical connections and tradition. Princeville, the oldest incorporated African American town in America, sits across the river, the bridge between the two less a metaphor than you might suppose even though my senior partner advised me that I might walk past young blacks who looked very familiar, as if siblings of some of the white friends I had met; apparently, some of the prominent white residents crossed the river in their pursuit of companionship.

When I moved there as a first year lawyer, the old homes and history enchanted me. The priest of Calvary Church and his wife, Don and Sarah, originally Yankees, befriended me as a young bachelor and introduced me to all of the eligible young women. None. For the most part, if you were young and single, you left town for Raleigh or Charlotte. Fortunately, when a visiting Superior Court judge, Napoleon Bonaparte Barefoot (his real name, and unknown to me at the time, an old classmate of my father’s), swore me in as a member of the bar, I spotted an attractive Assistant District Attorney and soon invited Marsha to dinner. She had been impressed that Judge Barefoot knew a novice lawyer such as me and accepted my invitation. Mostly, she too was single and, therefore, desperate although she would never admit to that.

We had dated a couple months when Valentine’s Day approached, and I wanted to dine somewhere nice outside of Tarboro where the only barbecue restaurant in a region famous for its barbecue was notable locally only for its excessive grease. The town queen of cuisine was an Italian restaurant in a strip shopping center that served good Americanized pasta and meatball subs but surprisingly also offered Moretti beer in a Budweiser town. I asked Don and Sarah if they knew of any nearby restaurants that would be suitable for a Valentine’s date. Eastern North Carolina has been notable for several remote and isolated special restaurants like the Country Squire outside Kenansville (formerly famous for a 72 ounce steak challenge that NC State football star and later LA Rams quarterback, Roman Gabriel, accepted). Don and Sarah knew something closer, a newly opened restaurant they had yet to try, and suggested they would like to join me and Marsha.

Sarah made reservations at The Legacy, an old Victorian mansion in Elm City, a tiny railroad town between Rocky Mount and Wilson, both of which continue to be Amtrak stops. With massive columns and wrap-around porch, the mansion appeared as out of place as the restaurant itself. In a town currently offering an American café called Oh My Lard [sic] and Boogies Turkey Barbecue (heresy in pork country), a fine dining establishment was nothing if not unexpected. There being no choices closer, we drove twenty miles for our holiday dinner date.

We were pleased when the waitress asked if we wanted wine with dinner. Much of North Carolina remained dry (no alcoholic beverages served) at the time. Don said that a wine list would be nice, and the waitress replied, “Red or white?” So much for the wine cellar. We shared hors d’oeuvres, then ordered dinner. Steak is always a safe bet, so most of us ordered a filet mignon, but Sarah ordered Beef (not “Boeuf”) Bourguignon. Sitting at a solitary table in the former parlor with its twelve foot ceilings, the atmosphere offered a sophistication found in Tarboro homes if not in Tarboro restaurants, not even at the tiny nine-hole country club, Hilma, a name that seemed as if someone had severed the spelling prematurely. Cordial banter prevailed as we waited for the chef (cook?) to complete our meals. Service was relaxed as it should be when the kitchen is preparing meals to order. We sucked down a few glasses of red until small green salads and the entrees eventually arrived. Everything looked good, and each of us immediately began to slice into our meat.

Don polled the table and asked if our steaks were cooked to our satisfaction. Marsha and I, mouths filled with tender filet, nodded with restrained satisfaction. The steak was not remarkable, but it was good enough. Sarah, however, replied, “Truthfully, this Bourguignon is kind of tough.”

When the waitress returned to see if we needed anything and inquired if we were content, Don spoke up, as a husband should, polite and patient as a priest should be. “My wife’s Bourguignon is rather tough.”

With the prepossessed confidence of a seasoned professional, our waitress instantly proposed a solution, “Would you like a sharper knife?” If the humor of the moment had not been equally mixed with the tragedy of the response, the rest of us might have spit with laughter our pre-chewed food as the absurdity washed over us. Stunned into silence, all of us checked the waitress’s expression for irony or outright humor, then searched for an apology (we considered it impossible that the suggestion was serious) as she stood listless beside the table watching Sarah’s plate as if the cubes of meat might suddenly reposition themselves and find the tenderness the cook had misplaced. Nothing happened, and Don choked on his visceral response.

I remember nothing else about the evening except my long climb up the elegant central stairway to a large restroom tiled in black and white checkerboard where I relieved myself prior to making the ride back to a simpler town with the tortured memory of a “fine dining” experience in rural eastern North Carolina, my home turf.

What I Kept

 

Memorabilia, loosely defined as anything intended to remind you later of what you did, or where you went, who you knew or what you valued. Not everyone collects memorabilia, but I have. Books rank highest. Art is close behind. Collecting includes anything from postcards, photos, beer coasters, pens and pencils, receipts, and stickers. Being able to look around the rooms of my home and see what I have kept lifts parts of each day with memories of good times past, travels, people, experiences. Beach flotsam, pine cones, skeletal remnants, teeth, ocean glass, antlers and skulls.

My first collections were things I found in the woods near my home in Chapel Hill where I lived  as an elementary student in a post-WWII college student housing neighborhood, Victory Village. Around the rotting wooden trash receptacles that held two galvinized steel garbage cans each, someone dumped steel helmets, helmet liners, canteens, ammo belts, 1911 .45 caliber leather pistol holsters, the materiel of war, conflict on a scale I could not comprehend. Much of the debris had likely been stored in small shallow attics for more than a decade. At age six, I was too young to understand what those artifacts represented to the people who once possessed them. Lost friends, pain and blood, fear and sleepless nights, bombs and artillery fire, wounded comrades, dead family, lives ended too young, the promise of futures terminated too early. War remained romantic for me and my friends. We watched a Tuesday night TV series titled Combat set during WWII where the Americans always prevailed.

At my grandparents’ home, I found a heavy cot from the same war. It was a weighty armful and then some, a burden that I could barely handle in my early teens. Sturdy canvas and hardwood frame gave me a solid sleeping platform in all the Boy Scout camps that we did not backpack into.

Along with my neighbors and classmates, we played army in the woods. Favorite Christmas gifts were anything military: plastic rifles, rubber bayonets, toy cannons. We traded badges and insignia, and mimicked jargon. But we never held ourselves to any sort of regimental discipline or ranks. As children of the early sixties, we stayed loose and freewheeling. If I was old enough to walk myself to my second grade class at Franklin Street Elementary School in downtown Chapel Hill, I was old enough to play by my own rules.

A few years later, the Boy Scouts exposed me to more serious collecting. Scouts of all ages trading all things scouting, sometimes for money as well. Rare patches, including those that were flawed at creation, appealed to bona fide collectors of all things BSA. Camporees and, even moreso, jamborees featured frenzied trading among scouts from around the region or, in the case of the National Jamboree, from US states and territories around the world. Who knew there were Boy Scout troops in Okinawa with members who were native Okinawan? Once I laid my acquisitive eyes on a headband from Okinawa, my determination was insatiable. White cotton with blue oriental characters, a simple rectangle similar to a bandana that the scouts tied around their foreheads. Each Okinawan scout I asked to trade refused. My friends gave up. I jumped deeper into the challenge and committed to asking every Okinawan scout I saw. Many shaking heads replied, many also declaring “No”. Politely, but no.

Just to be friendly as I met scouts from all over, I made several badge trades each day, but the Okinawa headband remained foremost in my goals. I was Ahab and the headband Moby Dick. Nothing would satisfy me until I possessed one, especially as all my friends had given up the chase.

Days passed before I met a nice Okinawan scout who seemed empathetic to my plight and did not flee from me fast enough to avoid my pitch. I persuaded (all but forced) him to accept a pile of patches that he may or may not have cared about in exchange for his headband. As a trade, he received the better value, but I had my Moby Dick. As we shook hands and I returned to my camp, his expression seemed one of remorse and regret, as if there might be some shame in having traded away his headband. For me, it seemed an act of generosity. The grin locked onto my face as I sashayed into camp was worth all the effort up until then. The members of my troop cooed and cawed as Ahab flashed his white whale around the campfire and tents. As far as I was concerned, I could go home then. Prey, pursuit, success.

Aside from scouting, what we collected as children defined us as...children. Curious. Bones, feathers, turtle shells, rocks, sea shells, shark’s teeth from the bottom of the hill at the mall construction site, odd pieces of weathered wood, bright leaves in autumn. Plus, the toys. GI Joe and his endless accoutrements (until my friend Gary and I decided we had outgrown GI Joe and constructed the Final Battle to blow up anything that would explode with a firecracker). A set of 007 miniatures. Anti-war (Viet Nam) posters, band posters, anything painted to brighten with black light. Albums galore, most of which I could not afford.

By college, my collecting goals had changed to new experiences (who, what, when, where, how) and, midway to my graduate degree, t-shirts from 10K runs, one half-marathon (the Chicken Bridge Run across the Haw River and back into Pittsboro for pancakes), and a mini-triathlon outside Greensboro. For about a decade I could boast of not having paid for a t-shirt (“free” with the entry fees). What I did start buying was outdoor gear, backpacking gear to replace my basic Boy Scout equipment. I joined REI in Seattle with a low 6-digit member number due to the dearth of outdoor gear shops in North Carolina at the time. I purchased my first Patagonia products and convinced my parents to give me a climbing rope for Christmas, a gift they always regretted and about which I never heard the end of their disappointment. The rope remains with me over four decades later (I would never climb with it now) as do my original brass Svea camp stove and Tournus Le Grand Tetras aluminum French candle light along with a couple of Austrian carbiners.

My t-shirts defined me as a runner in a similar way that my backpacking gear defined me as a lover of the outdoors: hiking, canoeing, backpacking, campfires, tents. In many ways, this age extended the Boy Scout ethos without being a member of a group with a uniform, rules and regular meetings, gatherings and prescribed goals measured by merit badges and other patches. Running, cycling and hiking all created the basis for conversation with new people, other students, at college. As we each shared our interests and passions, we exposed ourselves to unfamiliar worlds that attracted us (or not).

In the biggest departure from my past, I discovered poetry and soon began collecting books. Charles Olson, Ezra Pound, Robert Creeley. I steered away from the more routinely notable poets such as Carl Sandburg and Robert Frost. The initial collection paralleled the textbooks I needed for college courses like Chemistry, Economics, Ancient Irish, and Calculus. My American History final essay gave me a reason to buy and read all of Kerouac’s novels. It was a few years before the love of the books themselves precipitated a theoretically unlimited budget for acquiring new writers as I learned new names. And years more before I sought rare editions when I could afford them.

As I completed my post-secondary education and entered the working world, I found that certain of my collecting preferences continued and deepened. Deer skulls, pre-historic whale vertabrae, odd stones, and photographs (that I shot) assembled with memorabilia connected to family. A faded green and blue plaid flannel shirt worn soft that had belonged to my Scottish great-grandfather. A ceremonial Masonic (Scottish Rite) sword that had belonged to my maternal grandfather, a man I never knew. A silver belt buckle with matching watch chain and fob that had belonged to my paternal grandfather who I also never knew. I received these items mostly in lieu of actual memories. I remembered my great-grandfather, though mostly his rough Scottish brogue that came on the immigration ship with him, my great-grandmother and their daughters, the youngest my maternal grandmother. My unknown grandfathers never had a chance to tell me tales, and neither my father nor mother were old enough at their parents’ deaths to recall much of their history because their fathers died so young.

In addition, I found antiquated items that appealed to me as many of the goods sold in our country were of lesser quality than the older goods, those made of solid wood and high grade steel. In the days before the business theory of planned obsolescence, in the time when hardworking people valued their labor and their earnings and expected to purchase only goods and products that were durable, only to be acquired once, not every few years. When I could find the better quality products for less at antiquities shops, I acquired them even when I did not have the skills to use them. Old was superior to new in tools and furniture, something I knew but failed to practice consistently, something I learned again as I aged.

A Remarkably Unique Whisky

 

It should surprise no one that a blog titled Wild Haggis Studio might reference single malt whisky (there is no "e" in Scotch whisky as there is in all other types of "whiskey").

Glenfiddich, one of the most famous single malts, has started a series of "experiments". My wife bought me a bottle of Experiment #4 for Christmas, a label titled Fire and Cane.

I decided to review the whisky on the Glenfiddich web site after reading the diverse opinions.

As a lover of single malts in general and Glenfiddich in particular, my wife gambled that I would enjoy this experiment, and she was right. Admittedly, I already had a fondness for peat flavor which not all do. This is warm without the harsh kick of some of the more peaty whiskys. The rich smoke surprised and delighted me. Once the whisky opened up, more flavors and aromas emerged so that I savored a migration from the opening smoke to the final suggestion of a sweet finish, a lightness on the tongue more than a sugary flavor per se. Overall, the whisky presents a tantalizing and unique complexity that enlivens the taste like the myriad instruments of an orchestra combining in a symphony, some loud and bold, some quiet and sublime. I am tempted to spend the last half hour of each day beside a fire, reading Burns with a glass of Fire and Cane. Slainte.