I’m typically a one and done kinda guy. Because my attention span is equaled only to that of a four year old, my unyielding interests typically swirl around inside the crockpot of life. I trick myself into believing more ingredients only makes life taste better. I’m just grateful I’m not on my third wife.

This is the first and only duck decoy I’ve ever carved from a lifeless and uninspired block of wood. It would be treasonous amongst the master waterfowl carvers of Eastern North Carolina for me to take much credit for the outcome. The hands of whom had already mastered his craft, my instructor guided me through every detail with grace and patience. It was his seasoned experience and contagious enthusiasm that prodded me to complete, what otherwise would’ve lived undone amongst a pile of old love letters and yearbooks at the bottom of my chest of drawers.

Although I abandoned this craft after only one march to the end zone, I’m grateful for the man who quarterbacked my effort. As usual, my crockpot continues to overflow with gently used recreational equipment and other sundry items of minimal interest which I hope will one day find a better home via Craigslist.

Like the master craftsman who gently pulled me through the unfamiliar wood shop full of tools and paints I had not worked with before, I believe having caring and dedicated mentors to help us create beautiful things from lifeless, uninspired blocks of wood, is essential. Otherwise, my chest of drawers would be full of life half done.

Every evening, as I retire my tenure as CEO of another day, the lights in our home are relieved of their faithful duty, one by one. The moths, which enjoy basking in the light and tiny insects that doddle about the window panes, simply move on to their night time lair and wait for the coming day. Though our power meter spins like that of a hamster wheel, I believe a well lit home conveys a gracious invitation to anyone who wishes to visit.

Our children, either by choice or by coercion, tend to live life in their parent’s shadow. It’s a safe place, of a familiar shape, provided for their protection. A place to find shelter from the day’s trials and a pallet upon which to rest with an assurance they’ll sleep well through the night. Like butterflies from a cocoon, our little dumplings will one day emerge from beneath us, step timidly into the light, and wiggle their way to create a shadow of their own, one where they’ll invite those who need protecting, a place to find refuge from the trails they face, and a soft pallet upon which to sleep.

Last evening, as I was walking through my routine of laying low the lamps, chandeliers, and porch lights in our home before bed, with my wood floors moaning in protest as I trod over their bones, this image hung heavy on my eyes in a way I had not seen before. This anchor, which has been hung as if a medal on the chest of a naval war hero, has donned our front door for most of our two daughter’s stay along the Severn. It has served our family well for seven years now. Though the anchor has been a nice nautical feature, jammed pack full of Navy spirit, it’s the shadow that laid at my feet I noticed, unlike any other time, which raised the hairs on my neck and chilled my heart. The salty tears began to well up as I realized, the anchor, which has stood watch all these years, is a beautiful representation of our Midshipmen, and now, it is me who stands in their shadow.

The shadow of the shield they wield, which has been, “imbued with the highest ideals of duty, honor and loyalty”, is one to cherish and worthy to stand under. Now, the Naval
Academy is training Midshipmen to be the safe shadow for those who need protecting, a place to hide when those they serve need a retreat from the day’s toil, and will soon be the assurance for those who need a soft place to lay their heads for when the wolf knocks at the door. Their familiar shape, that will spread across the seven seas, the heavens, and fruited plains, will be guided by the oath they took which proclaims, in part, “I will support and defend the constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic”. That’s a deep and wide shadow for our collective Mids to cast, but it’s a net they’ve been weaving together their entire lives, it’s just who they are.

So, as this anchor continues to occupy its coveted spot and warmly welcomes those who care to cross our threshold, though the front is attractive and dressed in hues of white, it’s the shadow it casts in the dark of night which reassures me that our kids, as well as your’s, now have the watch. ⚓️

What was once a form of childhood punishment, albeit ineffective for kids who’s goal was to conquer the playground, being forced to sit still in “time out” never seemed to produce the same results as a good whack on the fanny. However, as an adult, staring around the cubicle of life, “time out” has become a vital lifestyle of healthy selfishness.

Time lounging on a beach, a pier, or boat, with rod and reel in hand, and fish stink on your clothes, is self prescribed medicine no pharmacist could offer to calm the mind and soothe the heart. Often, it’s just what the doctor ordered. A simple chair propped along the sandy shoreline, if only for a morning, is the right dose for me. Too much “time on” creates a life lived in the red.

Though my burdens may sometimes feel like a ton of lead weights upon my shoulders, at this moment, I’m choosing to live life as if my burdens rest like a ton of feathers. The salty medicine I swallow, while slouching in my portable chair, is chased with the intermittent champagne that bubbles at my feet. It’s as good as a two fish combo only reviled by the sweet tea I drink.

I believe there’s little which bolsters a fisherman’s spirit more than a fishing rod in hand and fresh fish in the bucket. As the moon bids adieu and tips its cap to the rising sun, we’re summonsed to the beach and compelled to wet a line, or two. It’s the only pastime where leaving the field, course, or court with zero points is not wished upon, but wholly acceptable.

So here I sit. I’ve been known to do so for hours, watching nothing more than my rod tip flutter with the tide. If I wanted to catch fish, I would try. On this day, I decided to let the fish swim unencumbered by my hook, line, and sinker. Maybe tomorrow I’ll be more of a surf fishing threat, but for now, I’ll take two of these and try again in the morning.

Pine State Creamery, founded in 1919 by Dr. Benjamin Wesley Kilgore, is but a faint memory to most Raleigh natives and a historic Southern icon of which, anyone under the tender age of thirty, has probably never known.  For those of us who have called Raleigh home for longer than we care to admit for fear of revealing just how old we really are, remember the old home place of this magic dairy wonderland where Tucker Street and Glenwood Avenue meet.

The two-story, Art Moderne building, so the more educated architectural enthusiasts among us have described it, still sits proudly in the same location it did when it was constructed in 1928.  This shrine to ice cream bliss that churned the milk so graciously given by the dairy cattle who once yielded the main ingredient for us all to revel in, has now become Sullivan’s Steak House which is quite fitting as this establishment is also a Raleigh delicacy, but also ironic.  Perhaps not as ironic as a Cook Out billboard I once saw in Johnston County positioned in the middle of a cow pasture, but, ironic nonetheless.

Needless to say, converting a dairy business to a steak house gives new meaning to the old saying “all gave some and some gave all”.

As a young boy, about the age where I began to believe that Santa Clause and his eight tiny reindeer may not actually exist and that girls really didn’t have cooties, I was introduced to two things that changed my life.  One being the little plastic cups of Pine State ice cream which some genius lunch lady decided would be a good idea to sell at my elementary school and two, the game of baseball.

I was not particularly fond of the small, oddly shaped wooden utensils bestowed upon me, which could also double as a tongue depressor, to consume this amazing vanilla delicacy.  Although I did not grow up with a silver spoon in my mouth, I believed my ice cream should be eaten with one.  The second most important thing in my life, at least at the time, that caused little butterflies to flutter around my insides, was the love I developed for baseball.  The third would probably be my second grade teacher who I had a slight crush on.

West Raleigh Baseball Association, founded in 1958, created a little league baseball field with concrete bleachers, a little green painted concession stand and a press box which, at the time, seemed as tall as the Empire State building.  The field was small, with a scoreboard in left field and a flag pole just behind the center field fence which was the prime directive as each team would recite the Pledge of Allegiance before every game.

As an adult, watching young people recite this pledge to our flag and Nation, causes my heart to swell and my eyes to well up with pride.  I thought it best to include it in this little story lest we forget the words but, more importantly, the meaning of those words.  I wouldn’t begrudge you one bit if you felt the urge to place your right hand over your heart when reading.

“I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

This little dusty diamond was then, as it is today, considered the mecca of little league baseball.  This pint sized sand lot did not carry the namesake of any elected officials or an over eager sponsor, but simply by a geographical point, a small little slice of hardball heaven positioned on the western edge of town.  In some unconventional and romantic way, this place expressed an inclusion and love of the community that surrounded it.

Now, although the facility itself is still referred to as West Raleigh, the field I still cherish in my heart is named after Burke Brother’s Hardware. Simply, Burke Field.  This little hardware store, also in West Raleigh, carries the same nostalgia and prominence in the community as the field that bears it’s name.  Perhaps I will expand, some other time, on my time spent in that little hardware store as a boy where my step Dad and I had backdoor privileges.  I still shop there thirty-five years later.  The smell is the same as it was then.  It’s hard to identify but just like a hardware smell.  I often catch myself peering into that little back room that only a select few have ever seen.

I was seven years old, old enough to know the difference between a large mouth bass and a bluegill but not quite old enough to understand why my Mother insisted that a take a bath every day.  I was a stubborn child and because of that ill conceived flaw, I would run the bath, sprinkle some water on my towel as if I had actually submerged myself and emerge 10 minutes later hoping my Mother would be none the wiser.  Needless to say, I didn’t bathe much.

I was a bit taller than the average kid but well under what most women in my family would consider well fed, although I was.  With an old glove in hand given to me by a friend, freshly oiled and beaten to a wrinkled pulp with my fist until it was bruised, I, for some reason, found myself paralyzed with fear upon arriving to the field for tryouts.  I was not a particularly courageous child as evidenced by previous incidents involving neighborhood dogs, snakes, a bully named Jimmy, girls who smelled good with pretty hair and the refusal to ride anything at the State Fair that inverted my slender frame.  When God created gravity, he did not intend for anyone to defy it except maybe Neil Armstrong and those of his kind.

Fortunately, I overcame my fear and pressed on.  This is when the butterflies first began to flutter in my gut and I began to embark on the second greatest thing that changed my life.

Back then, little league baseball players still wore knee high pants, stirrups over their socks and consumed countless pouches of Big League Chew.  Grape flavor was my favorite, but if the concession stand was out, Heaven forbid, they always had apple flavor as no one really liked that kind.  I remember, after an afternoon of tryouts, I received a call from a man who introduced himself as my new coach.

West Raleigh was a competitive baseball league of which, at least in my mind, only drafted the best seven to eleven year old boys they could find.  This was no sissy league and I knew it.  In retrospect, this was probably why I was gripped with such fear at the time and hesitated to leave the safety and security of my step Dad’s truck.  This is where the introduction of the Pine State Creamery rabbit trail is about to end.

Six or seven teams comprised the West Raleigh league.  I believe I can recall them all.  The league included the names Kirby & Company, which was a local vacuum dealer, Furniture Castle, Christopher’s Hairstyling, Mark Anthony which then became Mitchell’s, yes the hair salon, Coke, Pepsi, both of which were the most feared and Pine State.  There may have been a MacNair in there somewhere too.

I’m not the best writer the world has ever known, far from it, but one would have to be a poor purveyor of foreshadowing not to see how this little story might end.

It was March of 1979 and I had just been drafted by the team that carried the namesake of a dairy delight, the creamy bliss of which I loved so much that had already once changed my life.

At the time, I hadn’t yet learned the definition of the word “destiny” or “fate” but perhaps that’s what it was.  I was just over the moon with excitement.  I was a new member of team Pine State.  The name above all names with regards to frozen milk, vanilla bean extract, cream and sugar.  The name on the orange and white uniform, with orange stirrups, that I would soon wear across my chest, was a name that instilled pride and restored my courage as if permanent and traumatic brain damage from encounters with a few neighborhood dogs and the occasional black snake could ever really erase.  My time had come and I was ready to embrace it.

As my memory drifts like a sailboat upon the open sea, my mind begins to focus on lessons learned as a child.  Some tasted bitter at the time, not so much like the soap that my Mother threatened to wash my mouth with on occasion to keep me in line, but like the sweetness of Pine State ice cream that has helped shape who I’ve become today.

Fellow teammates and those on opposing rosters that I met when I was seven years old still occupy a small room in my mind where I sometimes go to reminisce.  Kids that I remained friends with in elementary, middle, high school and college that I continued to play ball with are treasures I wouldn’t trade for all the grape flavored Big League Chew the world has to offer.

There were lessons learned on that little field we call West Raleigh.  Lessons about friendship, how to be a humble winner but also how to be a good loser.  Lessons not learned with a X-Box or smart phone.  West Raleigh was, and is today, more than just a venue where kids play a game.  It’s much more important than that.  It’s within a community where kids could be kids and in a neighborhood where we knew where your friends were simply by the number of bikes that lined the driveway.  A place where, when the street lights illuminated in the Summer months, we knew it was time to drop whatever mischievous activities we were doing and go home.

A free sundae at Dairy Castle for every over the fence homerun was just peachy keen and chipper fine as my Mother would say.  I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Jack Daniel’s Deli which sat just outside the ballpark where we would buy packs of baseball cards.  Not sure which was better, finding a Nolan Ryan rookie card or the little piece of gum that came in the package.

Life seemed much more simple then.  As simple as who could stuff the most Big League Chew in their eight year old mouth, win a game of pickle or earn the right to be the assistant to the mic man in the press box.  We played under the lights which made us feel much more important than we really were.  Our parents didn’t have the notion that we were the next greatest gift to the Majors, spectators were still allowed to share their displeasure of a call made by the umpires without being scorned for their, what some may call, passion for the game and all we brought to the ballpark was a glove, a good attitude and a willingness to hustle.

As I close the door to that little room in my mind, I am grateful that, even then, I was being transformed into the man I am today.  Thank you Pine State and West Raleigh for all you’ve meant to me.  As my Mother would proclaim, I have more good memories and life lessons tucked away in my heart than Carter has little liver pills.  Whatever that may mean…

Out here, life is anything but small. Eastern North Carolina’s skies are as high as the row crop fields are wide. The asphalt veins seem endless as they carve through the sustenance that will one day rest on our tables.

Clouds, like quilted blankets, provide shade for those who toil in the black dirt. The wind betrays its covert ways as the brigade of corn stalks bow at its presence. The boots I wear trod across this land with reverence and awe as I ponder its creation. I’m grateful these places still exist and humbled as I measure my insignificance against the breadth of that which lies before me.