Pic of GW Andrews and family….front of old plantation cira 1900’ish

Never turn your back on family—back away slowly

Happiness is having a large, loving family—in another state. George Burns

If you can’t get rid of the family skeleton, you might as well make it dance. G Bernard Shaw

The face in the mirror couldn’t be mine…another tight lipped, tailored suit corporate exec—who had snuck in a splash of color and individuality via a scarf and sparkly earrings. No, this wasn’t my face at all; and I’d just taken steps to ensure it never would be. What are you thinking—ah, she’s going to have botox, a face lift, freckle bleaching? Nope.

After trading in one mind numbing DoD contractor corporate job (in which I was about to be promoted to a first tier exec) for another equally numbing position at a larger company, and staying only long enough to receive a signing bonus, my significant other and I ditched the suits and all that implies and went in search of greener dixieland acres.

Post 9/11, the VA/DC landscape had morphed into something you see in funhouse mirrors. Flying, for work or pleasure, had become barrels of monkey’s hilarious and time consuming. Beltway drivers were angry and it showed; violent crimes had escalated. Former friends either stuck heads in (non-middle eastern) sand or spouted war mongering rhetoric (full of sound and fury, signifying what?) The figurative pulse of that moment in time, according to an August 2003 journal entry was: erratic and thready. The patient known as America was at risk, not taking prescribed meds, had ditched its therapist, and was not expected to make a full recovery.

It was time to get out of dodge, a saying made popular by 60s show Gunsmoke, about mildly wild Dodge City, Kansas. Or did Wyatt Earp say it first? We weren’t in Kansas anymore. It felt like everyone was gunning for a fight, for anyone that dared to question what had happened 9/11 and why. Few wanted to discuss events that led up to 9/11: defamation of Ayatollah Khomeini; 1978 Iranian Revolution; 1979 seizure of US Embassy & failure of Op Eagle Claw, Tehran; 1979-89 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan; 1980 invasion of Iran by Iraq; 1981 assassination of Egyptian president; 1980s forming of Al-Qaida to contest occupation of Afghanistan, stationing of US troops in Arabia during 90-91 Gulf War (with bin Laden war declaration in 1996); proliferation of extremist voices, weapons, sanctions…

Even fewer wanted to analyze or critique America’s responses to these events—invasion of Afghanistan and hunting of Taliban fighters; invasion of Iraq in 2003; 2001 introduction of Patriot Act (authorizing big brother enhanced surveillance and excessive law enforcement measures); creation of Homeland Security… It therefore made sense the world at large was also experiencing a surge of serial killers: German Niels Hogel, hospital nurse (kills 100+); Russian Mikhail Popkov, aka Werewolf Maniac (confirmed kills 78); and Americans Sam Little (90 kills across 14 states) and Louisiana Strangler Ron Dominique (kills 23+). In my newly adopted state of N Carolina, there was the Taco Bell killer (17 kills); Two years hence, Dexter, a show about a successful serial killer with a conscious, would become a hit.

In the dead center of North Carolina we found and bought the perfect house/inn, an unWashington White House, complete with Tara’esque pillars and acres ofpine woods privacy. After the oil tank was refilled, under the house duct system and gutters replaced as well as two toilets and bathroom floors, pinewood floors polished, and period window treatments installed, we were open for business. Oh, and half a dozen masonry bits later, paintings and tapestries were hung on freshly painted plaster walls that had been reinforced with steel. We enjoyed a freak snowstorm in February that dropped an unprecedented 13 inches, and in March, a wind storm took out the power for 24 hours, downed trees, and blew slate shingles off the roof. I felt part of a gothic novel—one where the haunted mansion is about to claim another victim. I’ve described my short and sometimes scary time as an innkeeper in previous blogs, so I won’t go into great detail here except to say a yankee throwing a Gone With the Windex Open House was not a great idea, and the book I still want to write (Inn Over Our Heads) got a new working title: Final Inning.

To say 2004 was surreal is to admit, that like surrealist art, the year had a repressed dream vibe. It exuded a certain je ne sais quoix, an expanded awareness of time and space, and a sense of absurdity that challenged me as no other year had. Gazing back, there were moments when running a B&B on Lake Tillery (at the foothills of worn to a nub Uwharrie Mountains) felt like a movie short by Luis Bunuel, a play from Antonin Artaud’s theatre of the absurd. Or at very least, it resembled an undiscovered painting by Remedious Varo or Leonora Carrington.

Our Greek Revival plantation’s wildly intoxicating aromas cast a spell. Was it a lingering scent of warm, fragrant pine, the musk of magnolia, or the sweet perfume of Camilla’s that made me giddy?  The small cellar beneath the kitchen gave off the usual scents, as well as a whiff of spilled peaches soaked in brown sugar and muscadine wine; and the dregs of red wine gone to vinegar. The kitchen retained a trace of BBQ sauce spices and rose scented candlewax. Its seven fireplaces were redolent of pine and burnt ash. There were nuisances as well: creeping kudzu, introduced from the Orient; oversized Caribbean mosquitos (so hungry some folks required a transfusion after a few bites); and the long, dreadfully ‘hot dog’ days of a central North Carolina summer.

Sounds abounded; B&B guests were serenaded by bull frogs, cardinals, finches, crickets, and whippoorwills—all competing for airwave time. Casablanca fans whispered and whooshed; pines surrounding the house chattered and musically moved to the winds whim. And yet, what was even more memorable—and least tangible—remains impossible to define. A word comes to mind, magical, although trying to describe magic—is like using a wooden spoon to slice roast beef.

A treasured memory of the years spent at Pinefields was meeting and corresponding with JW, the son of the son of the son of the original owner, George Washington (GW) Andrews. JW lovingly embellished stories made the grand dame plantation come alive, not unlike Baba Yaga’s moveable house on stilts. Pinefields was originally a 15,000 acre corn, cotton, and tobacco plantation. The agriculturally oriented town and surroundings grew significantly after the construction of textile, furniture, and lumber mills; a carpet factory; and railway lines, which brought distant traffic and products from the North.

The county lost many native sons during the woah of nawthan aggression. And borders of this NC county in the mid 1800s were lined with Unionists, non-slave owning farmers, and Quakers. Two of GW’s uncles were killed in the civil war. There was a gold rush in 1900; about 50,000 ounces were dug up from local hills. Town Creek Indian Mound, the state’s oldest historical site, was excavated in 1937, uncovering amazing artifacts and evidence of the indigenous Keyauwee and Cheraw people that called the surroundings home for 1000s of years.

The past remains only partly hidden. There was still a whiff of charred wood in the fireplaceless downstairs bedroom JW told me served as a study for his father and uncle, one a college professor and frustrated playwright; the other a psychiatrist (recouping from a nervous breakdown & failed suicide attempt). JW first laid eyes on Pinefields in 1954, when his dad decided to ‘give up teaching (on the West coast) to become a playwright. Sale of virgin Pinefields timber and a few acres of land would bankroll the endeavor.’ The house was large enough to accommodate his family of five (he had two siblings), his uncle & family, and a grandmother.  

Upstairs Smoking/Sleeping Porch, Pinefields

JW is remembered as a cross between Jimmy Buffet and Peter Pan (always flying—can never land). I don’t know if his dad ever published his plays. James shared with me a play he’d written he hoped to get published/staged. It reminded me a bit of Wilder’s Our Town. It took place in the 50’s in a ficticious place called Gray’s Cove—a town quiet as a sleeping mime. I suggested he write into the play some of the anecdotes he’d shared about his colorful family. He shook his head—those memories were too tragic. ‘Let me guess,’ I smart assed. ‘Your parents were cousins.’ Alas, the tragedy wasn’t about kissing cousins. Both his psychiatrist uncle and his minister grandad committed suicide. As JW put it, both relatives were also a menace to sobriety.

Oh the lies I told myself about owning a B&B—I’ll be my own boss; I’ll get to cook and entertain all the time; it won’t be complete without a mascot dog…. In March, on Paddy’s Day, we welcomed our new Weimaraner (in foreground of pic below, backside of house). He was born on my birthday and was definitely an Aquarius. Sir Malin acted like Helen Keller before Annie Sullivan arrived—his paws and nose went everywhere, he thought all food was his; and we had trouble communicating—although he had the unique ability to hear a refrigerator door open when he was sound asleep at the other end of the house. I read him motivational books, like “What Would Lassie Do? and Old Yeller.” It’s true what songster Kinky Friedman said: money can buy a fine dog; only love can make it wag its tail.

The year advanced more rapidly than most. There were plane crashes; erupting volcanoes (& thunder & lightning, very very frightening); a coup d’etat in Haiti, and a different sort of coup with the launching of Facebook. We became good at running a B&B, in the same way a midget is good at being short. I planned creative B&B weekend getaways, like stitch and bitch (women only) and drink, don’t think (wine appreciation). The H G Wells themed murder mystery weekend was a bust. No one solved the crime, although everyone loved being in costume and drinking to excess. My mother visited 4-5 times and felt at home at the plantation. Her new favorite drink was (multiple) tall mint juleps, served by yours truly on a tray with freshly baked cheese straws or salmon and watercress biscuits with Crème Fraiche & dill. Her favorite spot was a rocker on the front porch or in colder weather an overstuffed chair next to the front parlor fireplace.

Echoes and undercurrents remained and occasionally traded spaces with current rooms. The front staircase was rebuilt in the 1930’s after a small fire damaged the entrance area. This staircase was modeled after a mansion in Connecticut. Wealthy NYer Ruth Hopper, who married GW Andrews’s son George Reid Andrews, took charge of staircase renovations, and modernized the house by adding front house wing additions, modern bathrooms, and extra closets. What’s now a generously sized, sunny dining room once served as the living room parlour for multiple generations of Andrew’s. Front parlor rooms weren’t often used in cold weather. We discovered why after crawling underneath the house. We rewrapped and fortified the heavy coils that carried heat and cool air. We converted most of the fireplaces to gas, added a fire pit outdoors, and bought an assortment of area rugs from local carpet factory to warm floors. The foundation of this 1870s manse was in excellent shape. They really did build houses then that stood the test of time—and dame nature’s temperament.

An old dirt road once ran parallel to the front of the house. Sharecroppers sold their produce along the side of the road, and the Andrews family cooled off by following the road to the creek, or to Lake Tillery, once it was finished in the late 1930’s. JW’s grandad hosted parties featuring a few minor stars and theatre folk from Hollywood and New York. Their lives were stories fit for the silver screen—affairs and divorces, suicide attempts, drug overdoses, mowing the lawn in the nude, multiple spouses, war heroes and sons killed in action, fortunes lost and found, the ghostly presence of a curly haired girl wearing pantaloons playing on the staircase landing…

To supplement the modest income received from B&B guests and hosting events, I accept a 40+ hour/week work from home consulting gig. A portion of the additional chaching went into the money pit plantation. While I basked in the beauty of life away from big cities and traffic, and occasionally felt like royalty, significant other (& son of the South) was feeling the dixie’ish rurality of the situation. The nearest upscale eatery/bar was 25 miles away—though I suspected you might be able to find a moonshine still in nearby hills. Ditto for movie theatres, malls, and places of interest. His friends were 100s of miles away—airports were 35 miles in one direction and 100 miles in opposite direction. I was amused by the bucolic scenery and vernacular. A slow grocery store clerk was as useful as a pogo stick in quicksand; someone dawdling at the door might be told: don’t let the screen door hit ya where your body split ya; and after reading something annoying, a local might exclaim don’t that jus mash your tatters (or maters)?    

At 2004’s year’s end, with fireplace roaring in Pinefield’s tartan themed library, I sat watching the ball drop in NYC’s Time Square, pleased I wasn’t there. My personal crystal ball did not reveal, however, that in three years time, I wouldn’t be at the plantation either. I surprised myself by moving deeper south, touching down in E Tennessee’s Smoky Mountain foothills. Flash forward to 2023 and I’m still surprised the thereness of Pinefields has never left. It joins a short list of unforgettable places I have known—that have known me as well. I wonder if Pinefields ever thinks about the folks that lived there in 2004, or if a hauntingly grand house can in turn be haunted? I’m reminded of a poem fragment by L MacNeice, who wrote:

A house can be haunted by those not there; if there was where they were missed. Returning is too much . . .You must leave to clear the air. So too, a life can be haunted by what it never was—if that potentiality was merely glimpsed . . .and yet, stumbling among dark trees, should I meet in those woods–one sudden shaft of light, or find bluebells bathing my feet, the world would resonate . . . I strike a clearing and see an unknown house—wondering was it mine? The door swings open and a figure beckons … and I for all remaining days of my life, embrace reminisces.

Back in the writing saddle again after travel, esoteric research break–and adopting a 3rd puppyhound! Will be posting final chapters of Grave Goddess and Act of Ambition soon. More to come on Remains to be Seen. New articles in 2024… Cheers!