Coastal ‘objects’ contribute plenty to North Carolina’s identity

Coastal North Carolina fares quite well in the tally of “50 objects” that define The Old North State, a project undertaken by Our State magazine for its September issue.

In a nutshell, editors selected about a dozen items that have direct coastal ties, beginning with the first-order Fresnel lenses that were capable of sending beams of light miles out into the Atlantic Ocean from the iconic coastal lighthouses, dating back to the mid-1850s. 

The first one was installed at the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse in 1854.

 

Our State’s top 50 list also includes a pair of wind-catching devices. Kitty Hawk Kites are designed to fly high in the sky, while Shibumi Shades stay anchored to the sand on the beach, providing cover from the sun’s rays to beachgoers.

 

The culture and heritage of Down East Carteret County is represented in a “trifecta” of objects that are North Carolina born and bred. They are oyster shucking tools, crab pots and duck decoys.

Our State contributing writer Jason Frye said: “Oysters are a treat to slurp down for supper, steam with friends on a fall evening or fawn over in a fried platter, but first you gotta open them up. And for that you’ll need an oyster shucker.”

It’s a knife-like tool with a blunt edge that fits comfortably in the palm of your dominant hand to pry open the hinge of the oyster shell. “Insert, twist, pop. Easy as 1, 2, 3,” Frye insists.

 

Frye also wrote the piece for Our State about crab pots, the PVC-coated wire mesh baskets that are dropped into the water to snare Atlantic blue crabs, a delicacy.

He also mentioned secondary uses for the colorful crab pots. For one, they can be piled up just-so to form a gigantic, 25-foot tall Christmas tree structure, which has become a holiday tradition at the Core Sound Waterfowl Museum & Heritage Center on Harkers Island.

Then, there’s the story about the famous crab pot Christmas trees, invented by the late Neal “Nicky” Harvey at his shop – Harvey & Sons Net and Twine – in Davis. 

He was the first to see that the vinyl-coated wire could be cut into triangles and made into a tree-shaped figure that folds flat for easy storage.

Harvey was awarded a U.S. patent in 2004, forming a cottage industry. Don Acree acquired the business in 2009 and established a company known as Fisherman Creations Inc., developing a national distribution system through major outlets and establishing a huge e-commerce presence.

 

Our State’s Hannah Lee Leidy contributed the article about decoy carving. “Centuries ago,” she wrote, “fisherman…turned to duck hunting for food and extra income during the lean winter months. To lure birds to their blinds, they relied on homemade decoys, crafted from whatever raw materials nature provided” including salvaged timber from shipwrecks.

 

“The decoys’ sophisticated designs gave wings to an emerging school of folk art….During this time, wealthy sportsmen from the North would follow migrating waterfowl – pintails, redheads, brants and geese – to eastern North Carolina. Local watermen would hire out their services as hunting guides.”

 

“Though our state’s heyday as a game-hunting destination has long flown, decoy carving endures as a celebrated art form,” Leidy wrote. “Names like Mitchell Fulcher, Homer Fulcher, Robert Pigott, Julian Hamilton, Alvin Harris and Ammie Paul have been canonized by museum curators and fine art collectors.”

“Some see the decoys as art, others as investments, but for many, these decoys are keepsakes carved from the very woods where they spent hours in the blinds beside fathers, grandfathers and friends,” Leidy concluded.

More columns on “50 objects” are yet to come.

‘Golf Lad’ continues to represent the Pinehurst brand

Pinehurst’s “Golf Lad” keeps popping up from time to time as a nostalgic flash-back to early advertising messages. He still looks the same as he did in 1905, wearing a white floppy hat, a billowing red shirt, baggy trousers with unhooked, flapping suspenders and boots.

 

He moves around the golf course from tee to sand trap to green. On the other hand, Pinehurst’s complementary “Putter Boy” is stationary, a bronze statue created in 1912.

 

Putter Boy was modeled after Golf Lad by sculptor Lucy Currier Richards. Standing just 18 inches tall, he had become the primary emblem of Pinehurst Resort, which opened in 1895 in North Carolina’s Moore County.

The Putter Boy was joined on the golf course in the 1990s by two other life-size statues of Pinehurst luminaries. 

A bronze statue of Donald J. Ross (shown on the left), the legendary golf course architect, was created by sculptor Gretta Lange Bader of Alexandria, Va., and dedicated in 1991.

 

Additionally, a bronze statue of James Walker Tufts, the first owner of Pinehurst, was created by sculptor Zenos Frudakis of Glenside, Pa. (near Philadelphia) and dedicated in 1996.

A fourth statue on the grounds at Pinehurst was dedicated in 2001, a tribute to professional golfer Payne Stewart, who won the first U.S. Open Championship played at the legendary Pinehurst No. 2 championship course in 1999. 

He died in a tragic charter airplane crash later that year, along with three other passengers and two pilots.

 

Titled “One Moment in Time,” the statue was also created by Frudakis. 

It depicts Stewart’s classic fist-pump after sinking the winning putt on the 18th hole to defeat Phil Mickelson by a single stroke at the 1999 U.S. Open. It remains one of the most dramatic final rounds in tournament history.

 

It’s only fitting, commented Jessica Marksbury, senior editor at GOLF, that Frudakis’ masterpiece“ has since become arguably the most famous statue in golf.” 

“Perhaps you’ve replicated Stewart’s celebratory fist-pump seen ’round the world: left leg planted, right leg raised and splayed, a forward lean, right arm extended in ecstasy.”

Plus, of course, there’s the famous Payne Stewart “look” in golfing attire: A navy-colored flat cap (traditional Scottish golf headwear), a red-and-navy striped golf shirt, traditional navy plus-fours (baggy knickers gathered just below the knee), long white stockings and white golf shoes. That day he also donned a navy rain jacket that he altered by cutting off the sleeves into a vest because the original sleeves felt too tight during his swing.

Stewart was 42 when the fatal accident occurred. He was born and raised in Springfield, Mo., and played collegiate golf at Southern Methodist University in University Park, Texas. A member of Phi Gamma Delta social fraternity, he graduated in 1979. Stewart earned his PGA Tour card in 1981 and won his first title on the tour at the 1982 Quad Cities Open at Coal Valley, Ill.

 

Stewart went on to win 11 PGA Tour events, including three major championships – the 1989 PGA Championship and the 1991 U.S. Open prior to the 1999 U.S. Open at Pinehurst.

 

Golf Lad was there as the mascot for the 1999 event, and he also returned for future U.S. Opens at Pinehurst, in 2005, 2014 and 2024, appearing prominently in the tournament logos, thanks largely to Stephen Cryan, former marketing director at Pinehurst. 

Cleverly, the 2014 image shows Golf Lad clutching the championship trophy almost exactly as Payne Stewart did after the 1999 tournament.

Golf Lad has also been the subject of a series of retro posters created by artist Eric Johnson of Nonesuch, Ky., that show him in various poses around the Pinehurst campus.

American golf: ‘Carolina born and bred’ at Pinehurst

Selecting just 50 objects to tell the “story of North Carolina” must have been a difficult assignment for editors of Our State magazine, but they gave it a go to produce the lead article that appears in the September issue.

The items mentioned range from the North Carolina mountains to the coast and include the mile markers on the Blue Ridge Parkway, mandolins and banjos, textile bobbins and shuttles…as well as boxes of Krispy Kreme doughnuts. It’s a fascinating piece.

 

Interestingly, one of the smallest “pure North Carolina” objects featured in the article is a souvenir golf ball from Pinehurst Resort, founded in 1895 in Moore County. 

The Titleist ball is stamped with the image of the iconic Pinehurst “Putter Boy.”

Widely known as the “Cradle of American Golf,” Pinehurst was carved out of “ravaged timberland” that was acquired by James Walker Tufts of Boston, Mass.

 Tufts bought 5,800 acres of land from the Henry Page family of Aberdeen, N.C., paying $1 per acre.

Tufts hired the development firm owned by Frederick Law Olmsted of Brookline, Mass., to design the Village of Pinehurst. 

(Olmstead was the landscape architect for the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, N.C., as well as the developer of New York City’s Central Park.)

Tufts’ grand scheme was to provide a comfortable resort for New Englanders to come south and experience mild winters. 

Obviously, golf entered into his thinking. In 1897, a nine-hole golf course was built…for starters.

In 1900, the well-known Scottish golfer Donald J. Ross arrived in Pinehurst “to take charge of all matters pertaining to the sport.”

 

Ross designed Pinehurst’s legendary No. 2 championship course as well as three others on the property. He borrowed what he learned growing up as a lad on the links of Dornoch, Scotland. (A seaside resort town, Dornoch is located near the wee northern tip of Scotland in the Highlands region.)

In Pinehurst, Ross discovered landforms that harkened to his homeland – sandhills. He set about retooling Pinehurst’s modest golf offering and expanding it.

 

Pinehurst’s archivist reported: “Golf’s popularity was spreading like wildfire in the early 1900s, and Pinehurst was at the epicenter.”

Writing for Golf Digest, Shane Ryan (shown below) said Tufts hired Frank Presbrey, who ran an advertising agency in New York City, to attract guests who were looking for recreation and relaxation. 

Presbrey created a young character known as “Golf Lad” to appear in magazine advertisements…and say: “Come to Pinehurst.”

 

Golf Lad wore a white floppy hat, a billowing red shirt, baggy trousers with unhooked, flapping suspenders and boots. 

He made his advertising debut in 1905, as Presbrey sought to promote an escape from a stuffy, urban existence to a “casual, informal, carefree, open-air lifestyle found in the North Carolina Sandhills,” centered around golf.

 

In 1912, Leonard Tufts (shown below), son of James Walker Tufts, hired Lucy Currier Richards, a Boston sculptor, to create a bronze statue for placement in the area between the two practice putting greens near the Pinehurst clubhouse.

 

“She knew very little about golf, but she was taken by the Golf Lad,” Ryan remarked. “With the help of Ross (who demonstrated the proper way to grip a golf club), she created the 18-inch statuette that still graces the grounds today – a boy with a floppy hat, face inscrutable, lining up to hit a ball.”

 

Richards’ bronze piece took the name of “Putter Boy.”

 

“The shaft of the club appears unusually long,” Ryan said. “That’s because Richards’ intent was to make the statue a sundial, and to make it accurately tell time, the angle of the club had to be longer than would appear normal.”

Luck’s Pinto Beans grew up in Seagrove, N.C.

Updating a previously published column:

Pinto beans are a Southern food, and Alfred Spencer of Seagrove, N.C., is the fellow who figured out how to put them into a can in 1950.

He and Ivey Luck opened Mountain View Canning Co. at Seagrove in rural Randolph County in 1947. Clay Presnell became a third partner in 1948. They started out canning beef and sausage products.

Chip Womick, a local journalist, learned that the men who gathered to play checkers at Ernest Spivey’s store in 1950 were pretty firm in their belief that “nobody can can a pinto bean fit to eat.”

Their wives, mothers and grandmothers knew the proper way to cook pinto beans was to soak them and slow cook them on simmer for hours in water seasoned with pork fatback and salt in a big old pot on the kitchen stove.

 

Spencer figured out how to make it work in a commercial kitchen. The company’s canned pinto beans were a hit. (Ivey Luck is shown below.)

Sales really took off when the partners changed the company name to Luck’s Incorporated in 1953.

 

Spencer also came up with the idea of bringing in Tommy Floyd and the Blue Ridge Buddies, a popular country music band, to help promote Luck’s beans. The group did a live show at Asheboro’s WGWR radio station. It was broadcast every Saturday morning.

 

Soon, Tommy Floyd and his band were plugging Luck’s products on television with country music spots syndicated on stations throughout the Southeast. Here is the jingle: “Luck’s pinto beans. Luck’s pinto beans. Eat ’em and you’ll never go wrong. Luck’s pinto beans.”

“Tommy Floyd had a lot to do with Luck’s becoming a household name,” said Alfred Spencer’s son Bill Spencer.

 

“Luck’s beans served a changing world,” Womick wrote in an article for Our State magazine.

“The economy was in need of heat-and-serve things,” said Lucy Rice, who went to work at Luck’s in 1954. “Women were starting to work. They could open a can and have a nutritious meal when they got home.”

 

Families could enjoy the flavor of slow-cooked pinto beans without having to invest the time to prepare them.

“Vance Williams drove a Luck’s company truck for 42 years. Once a month, every driver received a case of beans to dole out as he deemed necessary: to the men who monitored the vehicle weigh stations, to state troopers and to others,” Womick reported.

“Most orders were destined for store shelves within about a 500-mile radius. In the early days, the cans were sometimes still warm when they got to the stores. In all, Luck’s introduced more than 40 products through the years,” he added.

A brief message from Luck’s management team to its customers advised: 

“Satisfy your Southern roots…we aren’t going back to basics. We’ve always been there. This is the South. This is Luck’s. Pull up a chair and grab a fork.”

In 1967, Luck’s merged with American Home Products. Then in 2000, Luck’s was acquired by ConAgra Foods. The company closed the Seagrove plant in 2002, moving production to Tennessee.

Lucy Rice said she “could taste the difference.” Luck’s beans packed in Seagrove used well water. They must have city water in Tennessee, she surmised.

In 2011, the Luck’s brand was purchased by Arizona Canning Company, which later merged with Minnesota-based Faribault Foods. In 2014, La Costeña acquired Faribault.

 

Translated por sabor means for flavor.

The old Luck’s canning factory in Seagrove has been re-purposed as the Luck Comer Lail Center, a community events venue, thanks to local philanthropist Jack C. Lail.

 It’s the site of The Celebration of Seagrove Potters, an annual two-day festival, which is held in mid-November. The event is highly recommended by the Folk Art Society of America.

  

Here’s a bit of pinto bean history and how to fix ‘em

Pinto beans are small, versatile legumes that have been growing in Mexico and Peru for more than 7,000 years and have always been a staple in the local diets. 

Pinto translates from Spanish to “speckled or painted,” referencing the reddish-brown spots on these beige-colored beans.

Today, most pinto beans for commercial production are grown in northern Mexico and the southwestern parts of the United States.

Pinto beans are a nutritious part of almost any diet, due to the rich vitamin and mineral content of the beans. Each serving of pinto beans includes a potpourri of things that are good for you, and no sugar.

Pinto beans grow best in warm climates where they can enjoy at least 90 frost-free days and in an area that gets a minimum of six hours of full sun each day.

After 90 to 150 days, the pinto beans are ready for harvest. Pinto beans can be shelled and cooked fresh from the vine, but mostly, they are processed and canned or dried.

 

Before cooking dried beans, it’s always a good idea to rinse them under cool running water. Most people will simply soak their beans in a pot of water overnight in the refrigerator. Drain the liquid and rinse the beans with clean water prior to cooking.

 

If you’re trying to feed a family of four and you’d like everyone to have the recommended ½ cup serving of beans, you’ll want to cook one cup of dried pintos (which will make 2 cups cooked).

To cook your pinto beans, cover them with water (approximately 2 cups of water for every cup of beans) and then bring them to a boil. Once they start to boil, turn the heat down to a simmer and continue to cook for 1 to 1½ hours.

 

While cooking, pinto bean speckles dissolve and fade into a uniform, deep pink or brown color as the starches hydrate and the pigment in the seed coat disperses.

There’s nothing better than pinto beans and onions, unless it’s pinto beans and onions…and cornbread.

 

“This is hands-down my favorite food,” writes country music legend and actress Reba McEntire in her new cookbook, “Not That Fancy: Simple Lessons on Living, Loving, Eating, and Dusting Off Your Boots.”

 

“I’ve loved pinto beans and cornbread forever. And I still love them,” she said.

Reba’s recipe for pinto beans uses yellow onion, carrot, roughly chopped fried bacon, chicken stock, sherry vinegar, bay leaves and freshly ground black pepper; served with hot sauce.