A winter vacation is as seductive as the opium pipe. Slip away to the
sunny Southland just once during the winter; next season you will
surely want to do it again--one whiff and you are an habitué.
How drear and dismal snow-bound January seems! What a torrent of
chilly discomfort is the sleet and slush of March! The golf bag, or
the gun case, in the corner by the fireplace is a subtle, suggestive
temptation, and even the cheery open fire itself calls up memories of
crackling pine knots that spluttered and blazed not in deadly earnest,
so that you should not shiver, but lightly and brightly, impregnating
the air with the pungent frankincense of comradeship.
There is a glorious exultation in dodging Winter. You cannot really
fight on equal terms with the old rascal--a steam heater is such a
pitiful weapon after all--so there is a keen delight in snapping your
fingers under his frost-bitten nose. When you slip out of the freezing
grasp of his long, cold arms, you have cheated a cruel, inexorable
Fate. You feel like the hero of a Greek tragedy who has gloriously
turned the play to comedy, and there is a peculiarly delicious feeling
of freedom. The smelly coolness of the mid-summer woods is a respite
from the burning heat of the city in July; the tingling, briny
freshness of the wind-swept sea rocks is a reprieve--but the southern
sun in winter gives freely a full pardon to the weather prisoner. It is
he himself who weaves the enticing spell of the winter vacation, and
the minute you tumble out of the Pullman, from whose blackened eaves
the ghosts of icicles still trickle, you become a pagan sun worshipper.
Some winter vacationists carry their sun worshipping to a fanatic
extreme. They are not at all content to bask in the sun, they must go
way to Florida or Bermuda to be fairly baked. This sun gluttony carries
its own punishments of lazy lassitude and all the risks of a sniffling
cold or hacking cough when one must, as one always must, return to the
cold North. It is wiser and more temperate to slip just far enough into
the South to find a friendly sun, but not so far that he becomes a bore.
Isn’t the ideal winter play-place a country where it is warm enough
for you to feel the sun, so, if you are out-of-doors, you do not need
mufflers and ear tabs; where you can ride or motor, shoot or fish, play
golf or tennis without a bungling sweater clinging to your shoulders
and elbows; where you can sit under the trees an hour and read a
favorite book without your fingers being numbed to blueness? But don’t
you like a tang of frost in the morning air? Fifteen minutes in that
air before breakfast is worth a whole month of cold baths and setting
up exercises for starting the day right. In such a country too, the
nights will be cool and refreshing as spring water, and you will sleep
a sleep more strengthening than the most potent tonic in the whole
pharmacopoeia.
Such a winter play-place is the Piedmont country of the Carolinas, the
Sandhills, as the natives who “made cotton and corn on the clay” of the
lowlands contemptuously christened them years ago. This was the old
sea shore of the continent, and the sandy soil is even today, after all
these geological ages, almost as white as a beach. The Sandhills roll
away gently, not unlike great dunes, and through each little valley
trickles a little stream--“branches” the natives call them--on whose
banks crowd great clumps of holly bushes, bluegums, and magnolias. The
dry, sandy soil, like a great blotter, keeps the air as dry as cotton,
and the most soaking rain leaves no puddles or mud holes behind it.
This, as the Old North State’s hearty toast proudly proclaims, is indeed
“The land of the long leaf pine,
The southern land where the sun doth shine.”
[Illustration: Photo by Dr. Achorn
GRAPES, PEACHES AND COTTON THE STAPLE PRODUCTS OF THE SANDHILLS ALL
GROWING IN ONE FIELD]
Even the golfer on the Pinehurst links, who is so strictly admonished
“to keep his eye on the ball,” carries away with him the picture of
the towering long-leaf pines with their great, foot-long needles and
their giant cones. The Aiken motorist, as he bowls down the hillsides
and rattles over the little wooden bridge that spans the branch, cannot
fail to distinguish out of the whirling landscape the sandy hilltops
and the green thickets along the valley bottoms. The fox hunter, since
Reynard will surely lay a line of scent ’way off the beaten tracks into
the heart of the pine woods and the magnolia lowlands, will know the
Sandhills better. But the one who tramps over the Sandhills behind a
brace of bird dogs will know them best. Up through the valley, skirting
the branch--over the hillside and across the fallow cotton fields--a
scramble over the rail fence and a plunge through the tangle of holly
bushes and briars all snarled with creepers--splash, splash, through
the stream and up the other side of the hill. He is sure to learn the
country first hand, and he will meet all sorts of interesting people.
A lusty negro boy will be perfectly delighted to stop chopping at
the black-jack stumps to tell him, “Dere’s a whalin’ big cobey ob
birds done feed ober in dat field ob cow-peas. Ah hyah ’em whistlin’
’bout half an hour ’go.” On a level hilltop an old darky tar burner
will be his willing instructor in the mysteries of tar making. In a
little hollow, miles from the high road, he will come suddenly upon a
slatternly cabin with a curious chimney of clay and crossed sticks.
Here a trio of putty faced babies will eye him suspiciously from behind
the pig sty while their mother, a drab, timid woman, gives him a dipper
of water.
The quail shooter cannot wander over the Sandhills without sooner or
later being reminded of the post card with the picture of the revenue
officers and the score of captured blockade whisky stills he sent
off to his particular friend the first night he reached his hotel. I
remember very well a suspicious old fellow, whose curt answers and
strange advice sent our imaginations weaving tales of the moonshiners.
’Way back in the hills the dogs found a big covey beside a swamp and
the birds flushed over the hill. We followed them to pick up the
scattered singles and found two before we noticed this old fellow
sitting on a stump at the edge of the thicket. We called in the dogs
and walked over to him. He sat there, his elbows on his knees, his
hands clasped in front of him, quite motionless. A rusty, single
barrelled shotgun, with a hammer as big as a clothes hook, rested in
the crook of his arm, and between his feet sat a thin, black and tan
foxhound, with a meek, sorrowful expression in her dark eyes. Neither
man nor dog moved as we came up to them.
“Hello. Is this your land?” I asked.
He had been peering at us keenly from under his heavy brows as we
approached, but now he dropped his eyes and mumbled noncommittally,
“Dunno.”
“It isn’t posted, is it?”
“Tain’t posted,” he replied shortly.
“Are you finding many rabbits?” I asked him cheerfully.
“Ain’t huntin’ rabbits.”
“’Possums then?” I suggested.
“Ain’t huntin’ ’possum.”
“Does your hound point quail?”
“Nope.”
“Are you running deer? We saw some tracks back in the swamp.”
“Ain’t huntin’ deer.”
“Well, what are you hunting?”
“Ain’t huntin’ nawthin’.”
I gave up in despair, and my friend asked him very politely, “Do you
live hereabouts?”
“Ovah yondah,” he answered without a sign, so whether his home was
north, south, east, or west, and whether a hundred yards or ten miles
away, there was no telling.
“Are there many birds about here?”
“Dunno,” he answered shortly.
“Queen” had found another bird and was pointing beautifully. We went
over to her and my friend made a fine shot on a hard single. We started
on and the old man yelled after us. We stopped and turned. He was
hobbling slowly towards us.
“Is it possible he has found his tongue?” I whispered.
“The age of miracles is past,” replied my companion.
“Them birds you-all is huntin’,” said the old man when he was close
beside us, “went ovah t’other side o’ the swamp.”
“But,” protested my friend, “we saw them come over the hill and we’ve
found three singles already.”
“Right smart o’ ’em circled ’round.”
“Are you sure?” I persisted.
“Sartin’,” he grunted.
We exchanged glances, both wondering whether we were receiving a
friendly tip from a strange fellow-sportsman or whether we were being
gently warned away from the proximity of an illicit whisky still. We
accepted his advice and recrossed the swamp. We found just one lone
bird on that hillside where he had indicated, that “right smart o’ ’em”
had flown.
As we went down the hill on the other side my friend asked me in all
seriousness, “You know something about this Tar Heel dialect--would you
call one, ’right smart’?”
“Would you?” I asked, and we both laughed.
If “the East is East and the West is West,” so the North is North and
the South, South. That, if you really know the Sandhills, is one of
the best charms of a winter vacation in that fascinating country. It
is a very different country with different trees and flowers and birds
and animals. The people too, are different. The Sandhill darky is a
type quite distinct, and the Tar Heel is as fascinating and romantic
as his cousin up in the Cumberland Mountains. You will not find these
things at your hotel nor in the shops at Southern Pines, or Hamlet,
or Aberdeen. You will not find them on the golf links or the tennis
courts. You are very apt to ride over them on horseback, and you will
surely pass them in a motor; but they are there, and over and above the
good sport of winter play, they add a great deal to the fun of dodging
winter in the Sandhills.
“Them Huggins Boys”
Everybody in the Sandhills, it seemed, knew “them Huggins boys”, and
nobody had a good word to say for them. Everywhere I went I heard of
them, and everything that I heard was ill.
Just after my arrival, as I was superintending the loading of my trunk
onto a most rickety wagon, the station agent touched my arm and,
pointing across the tracks, said, “Thar’s one o’ them Huggins boys,
suh.”
I caught a fleeting glance of an amazingly long and lank youth jogging
away astraddle a dilapidated mule.
“Looks like Ichabod Crane, doesn’t he?” I noted casually.
The station agent was frankly puzzled to find the resemblance. He
scratched his sandy head and spat thoughtfully.
“Ah doan reckon,” he drawled, “Ah know What’s-his-name Crane. Is he
kin to the Cranes over in Scotland County?”
“No,” I laughed, “he’s a school-master in a book.”
This information relieved him immensely. He would have been touched to
the quick in his pride had he failed to recognize anyone in all the
Sandhills, but a character in a book was quite a different matter. He
grinned appreciatively.
“Oh,” he replied easily, “Ah ain’t much at book readin’; but ef
What’s-his-name Crane looked laik them Huggins boys, Ah bet he wasn’t
much of a school teacher.”
“Looks are deceiving,” I quoted.
“They shore are--them Huggins boys ain’t more’n half as mean lookin’ as
they is.”
It was my turn to be puzzled, but the trunk was loaded now, and by the
time I had given Uncle Willis his instructions, the agent had stepped
back into his cubbyhole office. I wanted to question him further about
“them Huggins boys” and find out the reason for his venomous words, but
there were many things to be attended to, and, resolving to drop in on
him some day between train times, I hurried over to the store.
Ten minutes later I again heard of “them Huggins boys.” The
storekeeper, introductions having been completed and after he had
done his duty by the good weather and the abundance of quail in the
vicinity, remarked in his cheerful, talkative way that a neighbor of
mine had just left.
“Is that so--who was it?” I asked politely.
“One of them Huggins boys.”