"Virginia's Mark Twain"

To contact us Click HERE

It's not that far, a couple hours' drive, from Person County N.C. to Patrick County, Va.  But Barnie Day's journey to published author has been going on nearly four decades now.  Along the way he has been a reporter, editor and newspaper publisher; retail merchant and health clinic administrator; political commentator and sage of the Blue Ridge, business executive and farmer; banker and county manager; county supervisor and state legislator.  A couple of people who should know have called him "Virginia's Mark Twain."


And as many who live around Belcher Mountain's Meadows of Dan already know, he has fought through Parkinson's disease while producing some crackerjack writing in his novel "The Last Pahvant," available on amazon.com and elsewhere, and in a new work about life in Oxford, N.C. during the Civil Rights era.
Now there's a 3,000 word story on Barnie Day in the July-August issue of Carolina Alumni Review, published by the General Alumni Association at UNC Chapel Hill.  Here's a link to that story:  If that doesn't work, copy and paste this into your whatchamacallit: http://www.carolinaalumnireview.com/carolinaalumnireview/20120708/?pg=22&pm=2&u1=friend
That story began 10 months ago after I read a version of "Pahvant" and told Barnie what everyone who reads the book also tells him: It ought to be in print. I sent a copy to my friend Regina Oliver last October and suggested the Review write about Barnie, who graduated from UNC in 1975. She immediately agreed, enthusiastically so, and asked me to write the piece.  So last November, Barnie and I started meeting early mornings for about an hour -- the length of time it takes for my arthritic hands to go from useful to seized up -- and we talked and talked on chilly mornings, and sometimes in the evenings over some Irish whiskey -- well into the new year.
We talked about life in the 1950s and 60s when he was growing up in Roxboro, about working in factories and at little newspapers, about scrabbling his way through Chapel Hill with the help of a athletic meal ticket his roommate had ("I tell people I went through Carolina on a football scholarship, it just won't mine," he likes to say), starting up a newspaper that folded not because it wasn't good, but because it was undercapitalized, and moving through a variety of jobs over the years, all the while thinking about writing the long form and telling stories people will want to read. 


The editors at the Alumni Review liked the story of Barnie's career so much  that they hired one of the best photographers anywhere: Steve Exum.  He came up to Meadows of Dan shortly after Spring arrived and shot wonderful photos of Barnie and Debbie Day, the restored farmhouse where they live (with secret rooms below ground where, the story goes, a moonshiner and bootlegger hid his illicit wares long ago) and the writing room where Barnie turns on the lamp many mornings hours before the sun starts to brighten the rural countryside.
 Oh, meant to add this one, too, of Barnie and Debbie, with Yip.


 

The 'Skunk Works' bass

To contact us Click HERE
My career as a bass fiddle player has been only slightly more successful than my career as a pitcher in the big leagues.  Which is to say, I would have starved to death during the Johnson Administration if we had depended on either one of them to put food on the table, although I played a whole lot more bass in  my youth than I ever threw in organized baseball. I pretty much gave up on the baseball thing at about age 10 or 12, when I could throw a blazing fastball that nobody every knew, including me, where it was going. I once walked a fellow on a fourth pitch that went over the backstop in a sandlot game.  I think they're still looking for the ball.

But for years, after falling in love with the bass sound while playing an old brass Sousaphone in the band at Aycock Junior High School in Greensboro, I fooled around with a bass fiddle.  In high school days a bunch of us got up a folk music group and decided we'd be the next Kingston Trio.  I borrowed an old, beat-up, dark-brown aluminum bass fiddle from the father of a friend and we played all over Greensboro and sometimes as far away as Danville, VA.  We entered a big contest where the prize was an appearance on the Arthur Smith Television Show down in Charlotte, knowing we'd win. (I recently mentioned this to a friend who, unbeknownst to me, had grown up in Greensboro, and he said, "Wait a minute, did you guys have on wide-striped shirts?" We did. He saw us that day long ago, 1963 I guess, up on a tractor trailer bandstand. And so he also saw us not win the thing, not go on to the bigtime in the Queen City, not go on to great fame and fortune in the entertainment business.)

The Villagers in 2004, Cane Creek Valley, Buncombe County

But we kept playing, despite the fact I couldn't read a lick of music, didn't know how to figure out what key some sheet music was in, didn't even know proper technique. See, I thought the beauty of the bass fiddle was you just listened to what other folks were playing and pick out about three pairs of notes and figure out real quick how you could do a little walk up or down the strings.  And that beat-to-a-pulp old aluminum bass sounded pretty dadgum good.

Years later, when I got a big raise one year, I bought a 1946 Kay double bass, nicked and gouged and cracked in places, and played it for decades with my high school buddies, a band called the Villagers. Thought about that old aluminum bass from time to time, but not much. I figured some sheet-metal genius somewhere had made a one-off version of the traditional spruce bass.  Sometimes I'd tell somebody about it, and they'd say something like, "You're kidding! Aluminum? No way."

A couple years ago my '46 Kay, made the same year I was, burned in a house fire. I've been looking for a good replacement ever since. Played an inexpensive late model substitute for about 18 months, but the other day drove up the Shenandoah Valley on a mission to Jerry Fretwell's bass shop in downtown Staunton, VA. He and his wife Mary Jane have a great website (www.fretwellbass.com) where you can see all these old basses he has -- a bunch of Kays, dating to the 1930s, and a rare Gibson bass, one of 85 that company made, and some other brands of old basses as well.  Jerry also buys new Engelhardts, which bought up the old Kay brand, and customizes them for folks who want a fancier new one.  I had my eye on a 1940 Kay and a 1952 Kay that I had spotted on his website. They were in pretty good shape and sounded great, but I fell for a 1959 Kay with a blonde finish, a new bridge and a set of Super Silver strings that Jerry installed as I watched.  Soooooo much easier to play that the metal-wound strings I had on my interim base.  I'm taking lessons now from Mike Mitchell over in Floyd VA (http://www.mitchellmusicco.com/) -- and learning things I should have known, oh, about 50 years ago. It's a revelation.

But the thing that really knocked me out was what I saw in Fretwell's front window: an aluminum bass, painted to look just like wood grain.  In fact, it was one of three aluminum basses in the windows -- one of them flat white, and another off to the side in a bright shiny silver.  They were made in the late 1920s and 1930s, all aluminum, and they were part of a collection the Fretwells have.
Here's a photo from the Fretwell website:

Aluminum basses, every one.

 

Turns out there was quite a production of aluminum basses in this country, starting in the late 19th century and championed, for at least a little while, by the Aluminum Company of America (ALCOA). I found a website that said the first ALCOA bases were turned out in the company's "skunk works" in Buffalo, where the company would fashion experimental products from aluminum.  Eventually the company made 500 of those aluminum basses, each selling in the $200 to $240 range when new.  There were other brands as well in the aluminum bass business.

The website http://kaybassrepair.com/aluminium-instruments/ notes, "The faux natural wood was well done; the top had graining and color close to that of a dark varnished tight grain spruce and the back / ribs have a faux curly figured grain patterning. AlCoA  had a fifty step patented process for creating this finish. From the distance of a bandstand or stage, you’ll have trouble identifying it from a wooden instrument."

I have no clue whether that old brown-painted tin bass I borrowed in Greensboro all these years ago was an ALCOA bass or an Aluminum Musical Instrument or even one of the G.A. Pfretzschner basses, but I do know that that it looked every bit like what you'd think of when you hear the term "skunk factory."  But beat up as it was, it would make a joyful noise. 

Bill Friday, Virginia's gift to North Carolina

To contact us Click HERE
William Clyde "Bill" Friday was born 92 years ago in the Rockbridge County, Va. community of Raphine, but he moved with his family to North Carolina as a child -- a historic event that in time would change North Carolina for the better.  Friday's contributions to the state can be measured in the progress North Carolina made in the second half of the 20th Century, when Friday's sure-handed guidance of the University of North Carolina system  contributed to the state's economic progress, the increase in its college-going rate and especially in his raising the expectations of students from low- and middle-income families that at the 17-campus UNC system, it would always be possible to go to college.

Bill Friday was my friend, though I never could quite bring myself to call him "Bill."  He did not have a doctorate and didn't particularly like to be called Dr. Friday, though many did.  Most of the time it was simply "Mr. Friday," and many was the time when Friday would have some issue on his mind, or a suggestion for an editorial, or a story one of our reporters might tackle, and when I answered the phone, the conversation would start this way: "Hello, old friend. This is Bill Friday...."

I'll miss his friendship and guidance, and his even-handed approach, as will North Carolina, but perhaps our policymakers will keep his approach and his convictions in mind in future as they make tough decisions.

Here's a piece I wrote for today's Charlotte Observer about Mr. Friday:

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/10/12/3594015/how-to-pay-debt-of-gratitude-to.html

Don't know if this tree made noise when it fell

To contact us Click HERE
So yesterday I noted that the howling wind from Sandy's remnants was still with us, as it is this morning, but that no trees had fallen.   Yesterday afternoon, I rolled in from a trip down to Winston-Salem and saw that I was wrong -- that a three-stemmed (but long dead) locust tree had capsized after taking on too much wind.

 If it blew over in the night or the day, no one heard it above the screech of the wind -- maybe because it's not big at all. I expect we'll get out the chain saws to make firewood billets and the splitter to bring it to size and the tractor to yank the stump this weekend.  At least we shouldn't have to wait for the wood to season. I think it's ready now.  Come to think of it, the storm did us a favor on this old tree.

Cooked your holiday ham yet? No? Here's how!

To contact us Click HERE
Well, shoot, lookahere, it's barely two weeks before Christmas and I've been so busy trying to wind up work on a book that I plum forgot what ought to be a Christmastime tradition around these parts: A great recipe for the best ham you ever ate.

It's important, of course, this being the Southern Appalachians and all, and as Southerners we have a duty to eat good pork and support an industry that has given the free world Smithfield hams in Virginia and pit-cooked barbecue in North Carolina and even something they call BBQ in more Southern climes.   Plus, you're going to need some ham and some greens and some black-eyed peas on New Years Day, assuming you want to start 2013 off on a good foot.

My Dad considered himself one of the world's foremost experts in eating ham.  Not the raising of ham, or the curing or the cooking or anything else related to the fixing.  Nossir, he just liked to eat 'em.  The ones he especially liked he called "hammus alabammus" -- from the pet pig Salomey belonging to the Yokum family in Al Capp's sometimes hilarious comic strip, Li'l Abner.  Dad would rate how country a ham was by quarts.  "That was a three-quart ham we had tonight," he'd say, referring not to the volume of ham we'd just wolfed down, but on how many quarts of water he'd likely have to drink that evening to deal with the salt factor before he hit the rack.  The more quarts, the better he liked it, and don't mention any of this to his salt-obsessed doctor, who'd surely read him seven riot acts for consuming so much salt and revving up his heart rate to about the same pace as Ol' 97 when it came screaming down the line toward Danville.

But I digress. The thing about the ham we've learned to enjoy up here is not only how good it is, but how you can make a house party out of fixing it. Or not, as you see fit, but it's always good to have a little Irish whiskey around to sip on while dreaming of what that ham-in-the-works aroma really means.  It means you are about to do some fine eating.

This set of instructions first appeared online, I think, in a blog of The Charlotte Observer, but it has its roots in the Person County N.C. community of Roxboro.  My neighbor Barnie Day passed it on to me a few years back and has demonstrated several times in the past year that this thing works well every time. I can't improve on Barnie's writing or his cooking, so here it is, in his own words.  Enjoy:


This is the world’s best way to cook a country ham.  Guaranteed.  Period.  Scout’s honor.  Cross my heart and hope to die.  And it’s not original.  Of course, I stole it.  And, as luck would have it, it is also the easiest.  Often the case.  We overcomplicate a lot of things.  Cooking a ham is one of them.


Let’s start with the ham itself, and how it was cured. 


There are lots of run-of-the-mill brands, some of them old and famous but still run-of-the-mill, brands that owe their reputations more to glossy catalogues and clever and expensive marketing campaigns than they do to judge-by-eating juries. 


Many of these hams are cured “inside out,” needle-embalmed with nitrate injections.  They are not the best hams -- often more expensive -- but not the best.


Still, these hams eat okay -- unless you’ve eaten ham cured like your granddaddy cured it, ham cured the old way.


He cured his hams “outside in.”  He didn’t know about nitrate injections.  (And if he had, he wouldn’t have done it to his hams!)  He simply packed his fresh in plain salt for six to eight weeks, took them up, washed and dried them, maybe smoked them a little, maybe not, probably peppered them, hung them in cotton sacking in a cool place, out of reach of the dogs, and aged them for several months. 


A note here:  don’t be flummoxed by the term “sugar cured.”  Often salt is mixed with sugar, with pepper, with molasses, with honey -- all kinds of stuff -- and labeled some fancy “cure,” or another, but these things -- including smoke -- be it apple wood, hickory, whatever -- only flavor hams.  What cures, or preserves, a ham is the salt that it absorbs during the curing process. 


Buy whatever brand you want.  For my money, the best country ham in this part of the world, the one closest to what your granddaddy cured, is a Clifty Farm ham, processed for 60 years or so by the Murphey Family, in Paris, Tennessee.  They’re usually available, and reasonably priced, across Southside Virginia around Christmastime.  ($1.79 a pound at the Piggly Wiggly in Danville.)

[Also available, our scouts in the field have advised us, at Slaughter's in Floyd. And now, back to Barnie:)


Okay, now let’s cook that bad boy!


Unwrap the ham and wash it.  Yeah, they all have a little mold.  No big deal.  Really.  It would cause me some concern if it didn’t have mold on it.  Just palm it off with a little warm water.  Two minutes, tops. 


Put the ham in a pot that you have a top for.  I always have to cut the hock off so it will fit the pot I use.  They’ll cut the hock off for you at the grocery store.  If I have to tell you what that hock is good for, stop reading this and move on.  You got no business with a country ham.  Either that, or you’re a Yankee, and threw the ham out when you saw the mold.


Fill the pot with water until the ham is covered with 3-4 inches, put the top on, and bring it to a boil.


Now here is the trick to this:  As soon as it begins to boil, you take it off the stove.  That’s right.  Off the stove when it begins to boil.  Set it somewhere where it will be out of your way. 


Now we’re going to wrap that puppy up.  Pot and all.  You can use most anything -- towels, an old blanket, a quilt, a sleeping bag.  The patio lounge cushion works well.  That’s what I use.  The idea is to insulate the pot so that it holds the heat.


I put an inch or so of newspaper under the pot, the same amount on top, wrap the patio cushion around it, and tie the cushion in place with baling twine.  This doesn’t take five minutes.  Just make sure it’s insulated good.


When you get it wrapped, leave it alone.  Walk away from it.  Forget about it for 12 hours.  Just let it sit.


After 12 hours, remove the wrap, and take the ham out of the pot and put it on a baking pan.  Careful here—even after sitting 12 hours, the water will be too hot for you to put your hands in.


Trim the skin off, score a diamond pattern on the thin layer of encasing fat, rub into it a cup of white sugar, put the ham -- uncovered -- in the oven and bake it for 2 hours at 275 degrees.  And that’s it.  You’re done.  Let it cool before slicing. 


Merry Christmas.  And best to you and yourn.


Barnie K. Day
Meadows of Dan, VA

"Virginia's Mark Twain"

To contact us Click HERE

It's not that far, a couple hours' drive, from Person County N.C. to Patrick County, Va.  But Barnie Day's journey to published author has been going on nearly four decades now.  Along the way he has been a reporter, editor and newspaper publisher; retail merchant and health clinic administrator; political commentator and sage of the Blue Ridge, business executive and farmer; banker and county manager; county supervisor and state legislator.  A couple of people who should know have called him "Virginia's Mark Twain."


And as many who live around Belcher Mountain's Meadows of Dan already know, he has fought through Parkinson's disease while producing some crackerjack writing in his novel "The Last Pahvant," available on amazon.com and elsewhere, and in a new work about life in Oxford, N.C. during the Civil Rights era.
Now there's a 3,000 word story on Barnie Day in the July-August issue of Carolina Alumni Review, published by the General Alumni Association at UNC Chapel Hill.  Here's a link to that story:  If that doesn't work, copy and paste this into your whatchamacallit: http://www.carolinaalumnireview.com/carolinaalumnireview/20120708/?pg=22&pm=2&u1=friend
That story began 10 months ago after I read a version of "Pahvant" and told Barnie what everyone who reads the book also tells him: It ought to be in print. I sent a copy to my friend Regina Oliver last October and suggested the Review write about Barnie, who graduated from UNC in 1975. She immediately agreed, enthusiastically so, and asked me to write the piece.  So last November, Barnie and I started meeting early mornings for about an hour -- the length of time it takes for my arthritic hands to go from useful to seized up -- and we talked and talked on chilly mornings, and sometimes in the evenings over some Irish whiskey -- well into the new year.
We talked about life in the 1950s and 60s when he was growing up in Roxboro, about working in factories and at little newspapers, about scrabbling his way through Chapel Hill with the help of a athletic meal ticket his roommate had ("I tell people I went through Carolina on a football scholarship, it just won't mine," he likes to say), starting up a newspaper that folded not because it wasn't good, but because it was undercapitalized, and moving through a variety of jobs over the years, all the while thinking about writing the long form and telling stories people will want to read. 


The editors at the Alumni Review liked the story of Barnie's career so much  that they hired one of the best photographers anywhere: Steve Exum.  He came up to Meadows of Dan shortly after Spring arrived and shot wonderful photos of Barnie and Debbie Day, the restored farmhouse where they live (with secret rooms below ground where, the story goes, a moonshiner and bootlegger hid his illicit wares long ago) and the writing room where Barnie turns on the lamp many mornings hours before the sun starts to brighten the rural countryside.
 Oh, meant to add this one, too, of Barnie and Debbie, with Yip.


 

The 'Skunk Works' bass

To contact us Click HERE
My career as a bass fiddle player has been only slightly more successful than my career as a pitcher in the big leagues.  Which is to say, I would have starved to death during the Johnson Administration if we had depended on either one of them to put food on the table, although I played a whole lot more bass in  my youth than I ever threw in organized baseball. I pretty much gave up on the baseball thing at about age 10 or 12, when I could throw a blazing fastball that nobody every knew, including me, where it was going. I once walked a fellow on a fourth pitch that went over the backstop in a sandlot game.  I think they're still looking for the ball.

But for years, after falling in love with the bass sound while playing an old brass Sousaphone in the band at Aycock Junior High School in Greensboro, I fooled around with a bass fiddle.  In high school days a bunch of us got up a folk music group and decided we'd be the next Kingston Trio.  I borrowed an old, beat-up, dark-brown aluminum bass fiddle from the father of a friend and we played all over Greensboro and sometimes as far away as Danville, VA.  We entered a big contest where the prize was an appearance on the Arthur Smith Television Show down in Charlotte, knowing we'd win. (I recently mentioned this to a friend who, unbeknownst to me, had grown up in Greensboro, and he said, "Wait a minute, did you guys have on wide-striped shirts?" We did. He saw us that day long ago, 1963 I guess, up on a tractor trailer bandstand. And so he also saw us not win the thing, not go on to the bigtime in the Queen City, not go on to great fame and fortune in the entertainment business.)

The Villagers in 2004, Cane Creek Valley, Buncombe County

But we kept playing, despite the fact I couldn't read a lick of music, didn't know how to figure out what key some sheet music was in, didn't even know proper technique. See, I thought the beauty of the bass fiddle was you just listened to what other folks were playing and pick out about three pairs of notes and figure out real quick how you could do a little walk up or down the strings.  And that beat-to-a-pulp old aluminum bass sounded pretty dadgum good.

Years later, when I got a big raise one year, I bought a 1946 Kay double bass, nicked and gouged and cracked in places, and played it for decades with my high school buddies, a band called the Villagers. Thought about that old aluminum bass from time to time, but not much. I figured some sheet-metal genius somewhere had made a one-off version of the traditional spruce bass.  Sometimes I'd tell somebody about it, and they'd say something like, "You're kidding! Aluminum? No way."

A couple years ago my '46 Kay, made the same year I was, burned in a house fire. I've been looking for a good replacement ever since. Played an inexpensive late model substitute for about 18 months, but the other day drove up the Shenandoah Valley on a mission to Jerry Fretwell's bass shop in downtown Staunton, VA. He and his wife Mary Jane have a great website (www.fretwellbass.com) where you can see all these old basses he has -- a bunch of Kays, dating to the 1930s, and a rare Gibson bass, one of 85 that company made, and some other brands of old basses as well.  Jerry also buys new Engelhardts, which bought up the old Kay brand, and customizes them for folks who want a fancier new one.  I had my eye on a 1940 Kay and a 1952 Kay that I had spotted on his website. They were in pretty good shape and sounded great, but I fell for a 1959 Kay with a blonde finish, a new bridge and a set of Super Silver strings that Jerry installed as I watched.  Soooooo much easier to play that the metal-wound strings I had on my interim base.  I'm taking lessons now from Mike Mitchell over in Floyd VA (http://www.mitchellmusicco.com/) -- and learning things I should have known, oh, about 50 years ago. It's a revelation.

But the thing that really knocked me out was what I saw in Fretwell's front window: an aluminum bass, painted to look just like wood grain.  In fact, it was one of three aluminum basses in the windows -- one of them flat white, and another off to the side in a bright shiny silver.  They were made in the late 1920s and 1930s, all aluminum, and they were part of a collection the Fretwells have.
Here's a photo from the Fretwell website:

Aluminum basses, every one.

 

Turns out there was quite a production of aluminum basses in this country, starting in the late 19th century and championed, for at least a little while, by the Aluminum Company of America (ALCOA). I found a website that said the first ALCOA bases were turned out in the company's "skunk works" in Buffalo, where the company would fashion experimental products from aluminum.  Eventually the company made 500 of those aluminum basses, each selling in the $200 to $240 range when new.  There were other brands as well in the aluminum bass business.

The website http://kaybassrepair.com/aluminium-instruments/ notes, "The faux natural wood was well done; the top had graining and color close to that of a dark varnished tight grain spruce and the back / ribs have a faux curly figured grain patterning. AlCoA  had a fifty step patented process for creating this finish. From the distance of a bandstand or stage, you’ll have trouble identifying it from a wooden instrument."

I have no clue whether that old brown-painted tin bass I borrowed in Greensboro all these years ago was an ALCOA bass or an Aluminum Musical Instrument or even one of the G.A. Pfretzschner basses, but I do know that that it looked every bit like what you'd think of when you hear the term "skunk factory."  But beat up as it was, it would make a joyful noise. 

Bill Friday, Virginia's gift to North Carolina

To contact us Click HERE
William Clyde "Bill" Friday was born 92 years ago in the Rockbridge County, Va. community of Raphine, but he moved with his family to North Carolina as a child -- a historic event that in time would change North Carolina for the better.  Friday's contributions to the state can be measured in the progress North Carolina made in the second half of the 20th Century, when Friday's sure-handed guidance of the University of North Carolina system  contributed to the state's economic progress, the increase in its college-going rate and especially in his raising the expectations of students from low- and middle-income families that at the 17-campus UNC system, it would always be possible to go to college.

Bill Friday was my friend, though I never could quite bring myself to call him "Bill."  He did not have a doctorate and didn't particularly like to be called Dr. Friday, though many did.  Most of the time it was simply "Mr. Friday," and many was the time when Friday would have some issue on his mind, or a suggestion for an editorial, or a story one of our reporters might tackle, and when I answered the phone, the conversation would start this way: "Hello, old friend. This is Bill Friday...."

I'll miss his friendship and guidance, and his even-handed approach, as will North Carolina, but perhaps our policymakers will keep his approach and his convictions in mind in future as they make tough decisions.

Here's a piece I wrote for today's Charlotte Observer about Mr. Friday:

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/10/12/3594015/how-to-pay-debt-of-gratitude-to.html

Don't know if this tree made noise when it fell

To contact us Click HERE
So yesterday I noted that the howling wind from Sandy's remnants was still with us, as it is this morning, but that no trees had fallen.   Yesterday afternoon, I rolled in from a trip down to Winston-Salem and saw that I was wrong -- that a three-stemmed (but long dead) locust tree had capsized after taking on too much wind.

 If it blew over in the night or the day, no one heard it above the screech of the wind -- maybe because it's not big at all. I expect we'll get out the chain saws to make firewood billets and the splitter to bring it to size and the tractor to yank the stump this weekend.  At least we shouldn't have to wait for the wood to season. I think it's ready now.  Come to think of it, the storm did us a favor on this old tree.

Cooked your holiday ham yet? No? Here's how!

To contact us Click HERE
Well, shoot, lookahere, it's barely two weeks before Christmas and I've been so busy trying to wind up work on a book that I plum forgot what ought to be a Christmastime tradition around these parts: A great recipe for the best ham you ever ate.

It's important, of course, this being the Southern Appalachians and all, and as Southerners we have a duty to eat good pork and support an industry that has given the free world Smithfield hams in Virginia and pit-cooked barbecue in North Carolina and even something they call BBQ in more Southern climes.   Plus, you're going to need some ham and some greens and some black-eyed peas on New Years Day, assuming you want to start 2013 off on a good foot.

My Dad considered himself one of the world's foremost experts in eating ham.  Not the raising of ham, or the curing or the cooking or anything else related to the fixing.  Nossir, he just liked to eat 'em.  The ones he especially liked he called "hammus alabammus" -- from the pet pig Salomey belonging to the Yokum family in Al Capp's sometimes hilarious comic strip, Li'l Abner.  Dad would rate how country a ham was by quarts.  "That was a three-quart ham we had tonight," he'd say, referring not to the volume of ham we'd just wolfed down, but on how many quarts of water he'd likely have to drink that evening to deal with the salt factor before he hit the rack.  The more quarts, the better he liked it, and don't mention any of this to his salt-obsessed doctor, who'd surely read him seven riot acts for consuming so much salt and revving up his heart rate to about the same pace as Ol' 97 when it came screaming down the line toward Danville.

But I digress. The thing about the ham we've learned to enjoy up here is not only how good it is, but how you can make a house party out of fixing it. Or not, as you see fit, but it's always good to have a little Irish whiskey around to sip on while dreaming of what that ham-in-the-works aroma really means.  It means you are about to do some fine eating.

This set of instructions first appeared online, I think, in a blog of The Charlotte Observer, but it has its roots in the Person County N.C. community of Roxboro.  My neighbor Barnie Day passed it on to me a few years back and has demonstrated several times in the past year that this thing works well every time. I can't improve on Barnie's writing or his cooking, so here it is, in his own words.  Enjoy:


This is the world’s best way to cook a country ham.  Guaranteed.  Period.  Scout’s honor.  Cross my heart and hope to die.  And it’s not original.  Of course, I stole it.  And, as luck would have it, it is also the easiest.  Often the case.  We overcomplicate a lot of things.  Cooking a ham is one of them.


Let’s start with the ham itself, and how it was cured. 


There are lots of run-of-the-mill brands, some of them old and famous but still run-of-the-mill, brands that owe their reputations more to glossy catalogues and clever and expensive marketing campaigns than they do to judge-by-eating juries. 


Many of these hams are cured “inside out,” needle-embalmed with nitrate injections.  They are not the best hams -- often more expensive -- but not the best.


Still, these hams eat okay -- unless you’ve eaten ham cured like your granddaddy cured it, ham cured the old way.


He cured his hams “outside in.”  He didn’t know about nitrate injections.  (And if he had, he wouldn’t have done it to his hams!)  He simply packed his fresh in plain salt for six to eight weeks, took them up, washed and dried them, maybe smoked them a little, maybe not, probably peppered them, hung them in cotton sacking in a cool place, out of reach of the dogs, and aged them for several months. 


A note here:  don’t be flummoxed by the term “sugar cured.”  Often salt is mixed with sugar, with pepper, with molasses, with honey -- all kinds of stuff -- and labeled some fancy “cure,” or another, but these things -- including smoke -- be it apple wood, hickory, whatever -- only flavor hams.  What cures, or preserves, a ham is the salt that it absorbs during the curing process. 


Buy whatever brand you want.  For my money, the best country ham in this part of the world, the one closest to what your granddaddy cured, is a Clifty Farm ham, processed for 60 years or so by the Murphey Family, in Paris, Tennessee.  They’re usually available, and reasonably priced, across Southside Virginia around Christmastime.  ($1.79 a pound at the Piggly Wiggly in Danville.)

[Also available, our scouts in the field have advised us, at Slaughter's in Floyd. And now, back to Barnie:)


Okay, now let’s cook that bad boy!


Unwrap the ham and wash it.  Yeah, they all have a little mold.  No big deal.  Really.  It would cause me some concern if it didn’t have mold on it.  Just palm it off with a little warm water.  Two minutes, tops. 


Put the ham in a pot that you have a top for.  I always have to cut the hock off so it will fit the pot I use.  They’ll cut the hock off for you at the grocery store.  If I have to tell you what that hock is good for, stop reading this and move on.  You got no business with a country ham.  Either that, or you’re a Yankee, and threw the ham out when you saw the mold.


Fill the pot with water until the ham is covered with 3-4 inches, put the top on, and bring it to a boil.


Now here is the trick to this:  As soon as it begins to boil, you take it off the stove.  That’s right.  Off the stove when it begins to boil.  Set it somewhere where it will be out of your way. 


Now we’re going to wrap that puppy up.  Pot and all.  You can use most anything -- towels, an old blanket, a quilt, a sleeping bag.  The patio lounge cushion works well.  That’s what I use.  The idea is to insulate the pot so that it holds the heat.


I put an inch or so of newspaper under the pot, the same amount on top, wrap the patio cushion around it, and tie the cushion in place with baling twine.  This doesn’t take five minutes.  Just make sure it’s insulated good.


When you get it wrapped, leave it alone.  Walk away from it.  Forget about it for 12 hours.  Just let it sit.


After 12 hours, remove the wrap, and take the ham out of the pot and put it on a baking pan.  Careful here—even after sitting 12 hours, the water will be too hot for you to put your hands in.


Trim the skin off, score a diamond pattern on the thin layer of encasing fat, rub into it a cup of white sugar, put the ham -- uncovered -- in the oven and bake it for 2 hours at 275 degrees.  And that’s it.  You’re done.  Let it cool before slicing. 


Merry Christmas.  And best to you and yourn.


Barnie K. Day
Meadows of Dan, VA

"Virginia's Mark Twain"

To contact us Click HERE

It's not that far, a couple hours' drive, from Person County N.C. to Patrick County, Va.  But Barnie Day's journey to published author has been going on nearly four decades now.  Along the way he has been a reporter, editor and newspaper publisher; retail merchant and health clinic administrator; political commentator and sage of the Blue Ridge, business executive and farmer; banker and county manager; county supervisor and state legislator.  A couple of people who should know have called him "Virginia's Mark Twain."


And as many who live around Belcher Mountain's Meadows of Dan already know, he has fought through Parkinson's disease while producing some crackerjack writing in his novel "The Last Pahvant," available on amazon.com and elsewhere, and in a new work about life in Oxford, N.C. during the Civil Rights era.
Now there's a 3,000 word story on Barnie Day in the July-August issue of Carolina Alumni Review, published by the General Alumni Association at UNC Chapel Hill.  Here's a link to that story:  If that doesn't work, copy and paste this into your whatchamacallit: http://www.carolinaalumnireview.com/carolinaalumnireview/20120708/?pg=22&pm=2&u1=friend
That story began 10 months ago after I read a version of "Pahvant" and told Barnie what everyone who reads the book also tells him: It ought to be in print. I sent a copy to my friend Regina Oliver last October and suggested the Review write about Barnie, who graduated from UNC in 1975. She immediately agreed, enthusiastically so, and asked me to write the piece.  So last November, Barnie and I started meeting early mornings for about an hour -- the length of time it takes for my arthritic hands to go from useful to seized up -- and we talked and talked on chilly mornings, and sometimes in the evenings over some Irish whiskey -- well into the new year.
We talked about life in the 1950s and 60s when he was growing up in Roxboro, about working in factories and at little newspapers, about scrabbling his way through Chapel Hill with the help of a athletic meal ticket his roommate had ("I tell people I went through Carolina on a football scholarship, it just won't mine," he likes to say), starting up a newspaper that folded not because it wasn't good, but because it was undercapitalized, and moving through a variety of jobs over the years, all the while thinking about writing the long form and telling stories people will want to read. 


The editors at the Alumni Review liked the story of Barnie's career so much  that they hired one of the best photographers anywhere: Steve Exum.  He came up to Meadows of Dan shortly after Spring arrived and shot wonderful photos of Barnie and Debbie Day, the restored farmhouse where they live (with secret rooms below ground where, the story goes, a moonshiner and bootlegger hid his illicit wares long ago) and the writing room where Barnie turns on the lamp many mornings hours before the sun starts to brighten the rural countryside.
 Oh, meant to add this one, too, of Barnie and Debbie, with Yip.


 

The 'Skunk Works' bass

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My career as a bass fiddle player has been only slightly more successful than my career as a pitcher in the big leagues.  Which is to say, I would have starved to death during the Johnson Administration if we had depended on either one of them to put food on the table, although I played a whole lot more bass in  my youth than I ever threw in organized baseball. I pretty much gave up on the baseball thing at about age 10 or 12, when I could throw a blazing fastball that nobody every knew, including me, where it was going. I once walked a fellow on a fourth pitch that went over the backstop in a sandlot game.  I think they're still looking for the ball.

But for years, after falling in love with the bass sound while playing an old brass Sousaphone in the band at Aycock Junior High School in Greensboro, I fooled around with a bass fiddle.  In high school days a bunch of us got up a folk music group and decided we'd be the next Kingston Trio.  I borrowed an old, beat-up, dark-brown aluminum bass fiddle from the father of a friend and we played all over Greensboro and sometimes as far away as Danville, VA.  We entered a big contest where the prize was an appearance on the Arthur Smith Television Show down in Charlotte, knowing we'd win. (I recently mentioned this to a friend who, unbeknownst to me, had grown up in Greensboro, and he said, "Wait a minute, did you guys have on wide-striped shirts?" We did. He saw us that day long ago, 1963 I guess, up on a tractor trailer bandstand. And so he also saw us not win the thing, not go on to the bigtime in the Queen City, not go on to great fame and fortune in the entertainment business.)

The Villagers in 2004, Cane Creek Valley, Buncombe County

But we kept playing, despite the fact I couldn't read a lick of music, didn't know how to figure out what key some sheet music was in, didn't even know proper technique. See, I thought the beauty of the bass fiddle was you just listened to what other folks were playing and pick out about three pairs of notes and figure out real quick how you could do a little walk up or down the strings.  And that beat-to-a-pulp old aluminum bass sounded pretty dadgum good.

Years later, when I got a big raise one year, I bought a 1946 Kay double bass, nicked and gouged and cracked in places, and played it for decades with my high school buddies, a band called the Villagers. Thought about that old aluminum bass from time to time, but not much. I figured some sheet-metal genius somewhere had made a one-off version of the traditional spruce bass.  Sometimes I'd tell somebody about it, and they'd say something like, "You're kidding! Aluminum? No way."

A couple years ago my '46 Kay, made the same year I was, burned in a house fire. I've been looking for a good replacement ever since. Played an inexpensive late model substitute for about 18 months, but the other day drove up the Shenandoah Valley on a mission to Jerry Fretwell's bass shop in downtown Staunton, VA. He and his wife Mary Jane have a great website (www.fretwellbass.com) where you can see all these old basses he has -- a bunch of Kays, dating to the 1930s, and a rare Gibson bass, one of 85 that company made, and some other brands of old basses as well.  Jerry also buys new Engelhardts, which bought up the old Kay brand, and customizes them for folks who want a fancier new one.  I had my eye on a 1940 Kay and a 1952 Kay that I had spotted on his website. They were in pretty good shape and sounded great, but I fell for a 1959 Kay with a blonde finish, a new bridge and a set of Super Silver strings that Jerry installed as I watched.  Soooooo much easier to play that the metal-wound strings I had on my interim base.  I'm taking lessons now from Mike Mitchell over in Floyd VA (http://www.mitchellmusicco.com/) -- and learning things I should have known, oh, about 50 years ago. It's a revelation.

But the thing that really knocked me out was what I saw in Fretwell's front window: an aluminum bass, painted to look just like wood grain.  In fact, it was one of three aluminum basses in the windows -- one of them flat white, and another off to the side in a bright shiny silver.  They were made in the late 1920s and 1930s, all aluminum, and they were part of a collection the Fretwells have.
Here's a photo from the Fretwell website:

Aluminum basses, every one.

 

Turns out there was quite a production of aluminum basses in this country, starting in the late 19th century and championed, for at least a little while, by the Aluminum Company of America (ALCOA). I found a website that said the first ALCOA bases were turned out in the company's "skunk works" in Buffalo, where the company would fashion experimental products from aluminum.  Eventually the company made 500 of those aluminum basses, each selling in the $200 to $240 range when new.  There were other brands as well in the aluminum bass business.

The website http://kaybassrepair.com/aluminium-instruments/ notes, "The faux natural wood was well done; the top had graining and color close to that of a dark varnished tight grain spruce and the back / ribs have a faux curly figured grain patterning. AlCoA  had a fifty step patented process for creating this finish. From the distance of a bandstand or stage, you’ll have trouble identifying it from a wooden instrument."

I have no clue whether that old brown-painted tin bass I borrowed in Greensboro all these years ago was an ALCOA bass or an Aluminum Musical Instrument or even one of the G.A. Pfretzschner basses, but I do know that that it looked every bit like what you'd think of when you hear the term "skunk factory."  But beat up as it was, it would make a joyful noise. 

Bill Friday, Virginia's gift to North Carolina

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William Clyde "Bill" Friday was born 92 years ago in the Rockbridge County, Va. community of Raphine, but he moved with his family to North Carolina as a child -- a historic event that in time would change North Carolina for the better.  Friday's contributions to the state can be measured in the progress North Carolina made in the second half of the 20th Century, when Friday's sure-handed guidance of the University of North Carolina system  contributed to the state's economic progress, the increase in its college-going rate and especially in his raising the expectations of students from low- and middle-income families that at the 17-campus UNC system, it would always be possible to go to college.

Bill Friday was my friend, though I never could quite bring myself to call him "Bill."  He did not have a doctorate and didn't particularly like to be called Dr. Friday, though many did.  Most of the time it was simply "Mr. Friday," and many was the time when Friday would have some issue on his mind, or a suggestion for an editorial, or a story one of our reporters might tackle, and when I answered the phone, the conversation would start this way: "Hello, old friend. This is Bill Friday...."

I'll miss his friendship and guidance, and his even-handed approach, as will North Carolina, but perhaps our policymakers will keep his approach and his convictions in mind in future as they make tough decisions.

Here's a piece I wrote for today's Charlotte Observer about Mr. Friday:

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/10/12/3594015/how-to-pay-debt-of-gratitude-to.html

Don't know if this tree made noise when it fell

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So yesterday I noted that the howling wind from Sandy's remnants was still with us, as it is this morning, but that no trees had fallen.   Yesterday afternoon, I rolled in from a trip down to Winston-Salem and saw that I was wrong -- that a three-stemmed (but long dead) locust tree had capsized after taking on too much wind.

 If it blew over in the night or the day, no one heard it above the screech of the wind -- maybe because it's not big at all. I expect we'll get out the chain saws to make firewood billets and the splitter to bring it to size and the tractor to yank the stump this weekend.  At least we shouldn't have to wait for the wood to season. I think it's ready now.  Come to think of it, the storm did us a favor on this old tree.

Cooked your holiday ham yet? No? Here's how!

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Well, shoot, lookahere, it's barely two weeks before Christmas and I've been so busy trying to wind up work on a book that I plum forgot what ought to be a Christmastime tradition around these parts: A great recipe for the best ham you ever ate.

It's important, of course, this being the Southern Appalachians and all, and as Southerners we have a duty to eat good pork and support an industry that has given the free world Smithfield hams in Virginia and pit-cooked barbecue in North Carolina and even something they call BBQ in more Southern climes.   Plus, you're going to need some ham and some greens and some black-eyed peas on New Years Day, assuming you want to start 2013 off on a good foot.

My Dad considered himself one of the world's foremost experts in eating ham.  Not the raising of ham, or the curing or the cooking or anything else related to the fixing.  Nossir, he just liked to eat 'em.  The ones he especially liked he called "hammus alabammus" -- from the pet pig Salomey belonging to the Yokum family in Al Capp's sometimes hilarious comic strip, Li'l Abner.  Dad would rate how country a ham was by quarts.  "That was a three-quart ham we had tonight," he'd say, referring not to the volume of ham we'd just wolfed down, but on how many quarts of water he'd likely have to drink that evening to deal with the salt factor before he hit the rack.  The more quarts, the better he liked it, and don't mention any of this to his salt-obsessed doctor, who'd surely read him seven riot acts for consuming so much salt and revving up his heart rate to about the same pace as Ol' 97 when it came screaming down the line toward Danville.

But I digress. The thing about the ham we've learned to enjoy up here is not only how good it is, but how you can make a house party out of fixing it. Or not, as you see fit, but it's always good to have a little Irish whiskey around to sip on while dreaming of what that ham-in-the-works aroma really means.  It means you are about to do some fine eating.

This set of instructions first appeared online, I think, in a blog of The Charlotte Observer, but it has its roots in the Person County N.C. community of Roxboro.  My neighbor Barnie Day passed it on to me a few years back and has demonstrated several times in the past year that this thing works well every time. I can't improve on Barnie's writing or his cooking, so here it is, in his own words.  Enjoy:


This is the world’s best way to cook a country ham.  Guaranteed.  Period.  Scout’s honor.  Cross my heart and hope to die.  And it’s not original.  Of course, I stole it.  And, as luck would have it, it is also the easiest.  Often the case.  We overcomplicate a lot of things.  Cooking a ham is one of them.


Let’s start with the ham itself, and how it was cured. 


There are lots of run-of-the-mill brands, some of them old and famous but still run-of-the-mill, brands that owe their reputations more to glossy catalogues and clever and expensive marketing campaigns than they do to judge-by-eating juries. 


Many of these hams are cured “inside out,” needle-embalmed with nitrate injections.  They are not the best hams -- often more expensive -- but not the best.


Still, these hams eat okay -- unless you’ve eaten ham cured like your granddaddy cured it, ham cured the old way.


He cured his hams “outside in.”  He didn’t know about nitrate injections.  (And if he had, he wouldn’t have done it to his hams!)  He simply packed his fresh in plain salt for six to eight weeks, took them up, washed and dried them, maybe smoked them a little, maybe not, probably peppered them, hung them in cotton sacking in a cool place, out of reach of the dogs, and aged them for several months. 


A note here:  don’t be flummoxed by the term “sugar cured.”  Often salt is mixed with sugar, with pepper, with molasses, with honey -- all kinds of stuff -- and labeled some fancy “cure,” or another, but these things -- including smoke -- be it apple wood, hickory, whatever -- only flavor hams.  What cures, or preserves, a ham is the salt that it absorbs during the curing process. 


Buy whatever brand you want.  For my money, the best country ham in this part of the world, the one closest to what your granddaddy cured, is a Clifty Farm ham, processed for 60 years or so by the Murphey Family, in Paris, Tennessee.  They’re usually available, and reasonably priced, across Southside Virginia around Christmastime.  ($1.79 a pound at the Piggly Wiggly in Danville.)

[Also available, our scouts in the field have advised us, at Slaughter's in Floyd. And now, back to Barnie:)


Okay, now let’s cook that bad boy!


Unwrap the ham and wash it.  Yeah, they all have a little mold.  No big deal.  Really.  It would cause me some concern if it didn’t have mold on it.  Just palm it off with a little warm water.  Two minutes, tops. 


Put the ham in a pot that you have a top for.  I always have to cut the hock off so it will fit the pot I use.  They’ll cut the hock off for you at the grocery store.  If I have to tell you what that hock is good for, stop reading this and move on.  You got no business with a country ham.  Either that, or you’re a Yankee, and threw the ham out when you saw the mold.


Fill the pot with water until the ham is covered with 3-4 inches, put the top on, and bring it to a boil.


Now here is the trick to this:  As soon as it begins to boil, you take it off the stove.  That’s right.  Off the stove when it begins to boil.  Set it somewhere where it will be out of your way. 


Now we’re going to wrap that puppy up.  Pot and all.  You can use most anything -- towels, an old blanket, a quilt, a sleeping bag.  The patio lounge cushion works well.  That’s what I use.  The idea is to insulate the pot so that it holds the heat.


I put an inch or so of newspaper under the pot, the same amount on top, wrap the patio cushion around it, and tie the cushion in place with baling twine.  This doesn’t take five minutes.  Just make sure it’s insulated good.


When you get it wrapped, leave it alone.  Walk away from it.  Forget about it for 12 hours.  Just let it sit.


After 12 hours, remove the wrap, and take the ham out of the pot and put it on a baking pan.  Careful here—even after sitting 12 hours, the water will be too hot for you to put your hands in.


Trim the skin off, score a diamond pattern on the thin layer of encasing fat, rub into it a cup of white sugar, put the ham -- uncovered -- in the oven and bake it for 2 hours at 275 degrees.  And that’s it.  You’re done.  Let it cool before slicing. 


Merry Christmas.  And best to you and yourn.


Barnie K. Day
Meadows of Dan, VA