Page TWO
THE BILOT—Southern Pines, North Carolina
OVER A PLACE OF DRY BONES
THURSDAf, JANUARY 3, 1963
Birds-And The Miracle Of Life
Southern Pines
North Carolina
“In taking over The Pilot no changes are contemplated. We will try to keep this a good
paper. We will try to make a little money for all concerned. Wherever there seems to be
an occasion to use our influence for the public good we will try to do it. And we will
treat everybody alike.”—James Boyd, May 23, 1941.
Past Year Points To Good Year Ahead
Business, industrial, civic and educa
tional development in Moore County,
' especially in the Southern Pines area,
during the past year has been impressive,
as one looks back over the headlines of
1962, at the year’s end.
The picture, never fully seen from day
to day or week to week, points to a good
year ahead. Indeed, many of the outstand
ing developments of 1962 were only
beginnings: their fruition and their major
significance to the community lie ahead.
So it is with the community’s biggest
and best New Year’s present: start of
operations, scheduled for this week, at
the Proctor-Silex Corporation electric
iron manufacturing plant just completed
here. Here is an industry that expects to
build up gradually during the coming
year to a payroll of up to 500—the largest
this community has ever known. This is
certain to provide an important economic
impact on the area.
Also in the realm of “beginnings” is the
extremely ambitious country club-resi
dential development on the former Wat
son property and adjoining tracts, be
tween Southern Pines and Pinehurst—a
project which involves some of the state’s
outstanding men and their families. We
can think of no more suitable purpose to
which this magnificent tract of land
could be put and are certain that the
developers will receive a warm welcome
from the Sandhills community.
Still another country club-residential
development, also between Southern
Pines and Pinehurst, north of Midland
Road, is in the planning stage, with few
details revealed as yet, but adding to the
brightness of the future of resort facili
ties.
Beginning also this year, and now mov
ing toward completion, is the motel-res
taurant-golf project off No. 1 highway
north of Southern Pines, being built by
the owners of the still rapidly grow
ing. Whispering Pines residential and
Country Club' development. Whispering
Pines its^fjjiade new starts, too: opening
of its gqp ffourse and country club and
construction of a third lake and other
expansion activity.
There are new developments in other
fields—start of construction of the coun
ty’s first million-dollar consolidated high
school, located between Carthage and
Vass, the first of two or more such schools
to be built by the county school system;
an extensive program of municipal im-
o^ements in Southern Pines, financed
by bond issues, in the sewage and water
systems, as well as an addition to the
library and a municipal swimming pool
in \\ est Southern Pines. The effects of
all these projects have yet to be felt in
the community. Work on the Episcopal
Home for the Ageing here is just beginn
ing, also.
A new church (Our Saviour Lutheran)
and a new bank ( a branch of the South
ern National of Lumberton) have become
fully organized here during the past year
—marks of growth and economic health
in any town. And a branch bank was
opened in a new building by The Citizens
Bank and Trust Company.
Existing enterprises, in both the resort
ana business fields, have expanded during
the past year. Fletcher Southern, manu
facturers of textile machinery parts, took
over the Watson-Williams Company of
Pinebluff and set up a new operation,
Fletcher Shuttles, here, also expanding
the plant’s building on the Carthage road.
New this year, too, was Pinehurst’s
first year-around operation: opening of
the Holly Inn, with a new swimming pool
and full air-conditioning, for summer
guests. This and other signs point to in
creasing significance of the Sandhills as
an all-year resort area.
Both of Southern Pines’s two major
resort facilities—the Mid Pines Club and
the Pine Needles Country Club and
Lodges—made improvements and expans
ions during the past year: a convention
hall-dining room and additional guest
rooms at Mid Pines, and an “indoor-out
door” swimming pool at Pine Needles.
■ Dedicated during the past year was the
final phase of the big Southern Pines
High School construction program, bring
ing to completion this handsome building
project, to meet the needs of a continual
ly expanding local school system. A start
was made during the year also on a new
high school building for West Southern
Pines.
New post offices were dedicated during
the past year at Aberdeen, Pinebluff,
Carthage and Robbins. In upper Moore
County, an automated, modern feed mill
at Spies was put into operation.
The past year saw a fund-raising cam
paign for Moore Memorial Hospital that,
added to special gifts and matching
government funds, launched a $2 million
wing construction project for that institu
tion, now in the planning stage.
Other new projects in this area which
have gone into operation during the past
year, involving new construction work or
remodeling, are Christy’s Restaurant just
south of town; the Mbntgomery Dairies
building and the Pinehurst Motor Lodge,
between Southern Pines and Aberdeen;
and the Horne’s Restaurant at Aberdeen.
New house construction has flourished
in and around Southern Pines during
1962. New industries have brought several
families to the community and I’etired
persons have continued to choose the
Sandhills for their home.
The big motel and restaurant project
on No. 1 highway south of Southern
Pines, after long delays involving its sale
while still unfinished and other matters,
seems about to get squared away under
new ownership to proceed toward com
pletion.
All these items that come to mind—
only the highlights of a year full of en
couraging activity—reinforce our confi
dence in Moore County, the Sandhills and
Southern Pines—a confidence that we
hear more and more expressed by persons
who are concerned about the future of
the area.
This list of 1962 accomplishments, many
of v/hich will see their full flowering in
the future, offers ample justification for
the prediction of a prosperous and happy
New Year ahead.
Loren C. Eiseley, author of the
following, is chairman of the de
partment of anthropology in the
University of Pennsylvania. He is
the author of articles on evolu
tion and of a wonderful book,
“The Immense Journey,” based on
exploration in the Badlands, here
in described. This excerpt was
taken from “Judgment of The
Birds,” an article published in
the Spring, 1956, issue of The
American Scholar. (The whole ar
ticle is equally fine and The Pilot
will gladly lend it to anyone who
will promise to bring it back. Ed.)
On the maps of old voyagers it
is called Mauvaises Terres, the
“evil lands,” and, slurred a little
with the passage through m.any
minds, it has come down to us
anglicized as the “Badlands.” The
soft rustling of m.oceasins haj-
passed through its canyons on the
grim business of war and flight,
but the last of those slight dis
turbances of immemorial silences
died out almost a century ago.
The land, if one can call it a land,
is a waste as lifeless as that val
ley in which lie the kings of
Egypt. Like the 'Valley of the
Kings, it is a mausoleum, a place
of dry bones in what once was a
place of life. Now it has silences
as tangible as those in the moon’s
airless chasms.
Nothing Qrows
Nothing grows among its pin
nacles; there is no shade except
under great toadstools of sand
stone whose bases have been eat
en to the shape of wine glasses
by the v/ind. Everything is flak
ing, cracking, disintegrating,
wearing away in the long, imper
ceptible weather of time. The ash
of ancient volcanic outbursts still
sterilizes its soil, and the colors
in that waste are the colors that
flame in the lonely sunsets on
dead planets. Men come there but
rarely, and for one purpose only,
the collection of bones.
It was a late hour on a cold,
wind-bitten autumn day when I
climbed a great hill spined like a
dinosaur’s back and tried to take
my bearings. The tumbled waste
fell away in waves in all direc
tions. Blue air was darkening into
purple along the bases of the hills.
I shifted my knapsack, heavy
with the petrified bones of long-
vanished creatures, and studied
my compass. I wanted to be out
of there by nightfall, and already
the sun was going sullenly down
in the west.
Living Bullets
It was then that I saw the flight
coming on. It was moving like a
little close-knit body of black
specks that danced and darted
and closed again. It was pouring
from the north and heading to
ward me with the undeviating re
lentlessness of a compass needle.
It streamed through the shadows
rising out of monstrous gorges. It
rushed over towering pinnacles in
the red light of the sun, or mo
mentarily sank from sight within
their shade. Across that desert of
eroding clay and wind-worn stone
they came with a faint, wild twit-
Winter Cardinal—He's Hungry These Days
(Woodcut by Glen Rounds of Southern Pines)
tering that filled all the air
about me as those tiny, living bul
lets hurtled past into the night.
It may not strike you as a mar
vel. It would not, perhaps, unless
you stood in the middle of a dead
world at sunset, but that was
where I stood. Fifty million years
lay under my feet, fifty million
years of bellowing monsters mov
ing in a green world now gone so
utterly that its very light was
traveling on the farther edge of
space. The chemicals of all that
vanished age lay about me in the
ground. Around me still lay the
sheering molars of dead titanoth-
er.js, the delicate sabers of soft-
stepping cats, the hollow sockets
that had held the eyes of many a
strange, outmoded beast. Those
eyes had looked out upon a world
as real as ours; dark, savage
brains had roamed and roared
their challenges into the steam
ing night.
Ebbing Moments
Now they were still here or,
put it as you will, the chemicals
that m.ade them were here about
me in the ground. The carbon that
had driven them ran blackly in
the eroding stone. The stain of
iron was in the clays. The iron
did not remember the blood it had
once moved within, the phosphor
us had forgotten the savage brain.
The little individual moment had
ebbed from all those strange com
binations of chemicals as it would
ebb from our living bodies into
the sinks and runnels of oncom
ing time. I had lifted up a fistful
of that ground. I held it while that
wild flight of southbound warb
lers hurtled over me into the on
coming dark. There went phos
phorus, there went iron, there
went carbon, there beat the cal
cium in those hurrying wings.
Alone on a dead planet, I watched
that incredible miracle speeding
past. It ran by some true compass
over field and wasteland. It cried
its individual ecstacies into the
air until the gullies rang. It
swerved like a single body; it
knew itself and, lonely, it bunch
ed close in the racing darkness, its
individual entities feeling about
them the rising night. And so,
crying to each other their iden
tity, they passed away out of my
sight. ^
Not Mocked
I dropped my fistful of earth. 4M1'
heard it roll, inanimate, back into
the gully at the base of the hill;
iron, carbon, the chemicals of life.
Like men from those wild tribes
who had haunted these hills be
fore me seeking visions, I made
my sign to the great darkness. It
was not a mocking sign, and I
was not mocked. As I walked into
my camp late that night, one man,
rousing from his blankets beside
the lire, asked sleepily, “'What did
you see?”
“I think, a miracle,” I said soft
ly, but I said it to myself. Behind
me that vast waste began to glow
under the rising moon.
Song Al Dawning
Waking early the morning
after the, ice storm from a sleep
troubled by the tragic sounds of
snapping trees and boughs crash
ing to earth, we looked out as
dawn was coming.
The pines were a curtain of
white ice. Everything was very
still. The wJhole world was froz
en, cold, dead. As the first rays
struck the! icy woods, turning
them into irridescent shimmering
lights! a sound stole into the air.
It wafe the high, clear notes of a
whitej-thioat, singing his welcome
to thel ne^ day.
Hi, Sfranaer!
A secrel lure towards the sport
and deliglit of bird-watching is
the hope—Iperfectly unreasonable
,but never-tfailing—that some day
you’re going to see a bird never
seen beford. Some day a fabulous
creature w ill drop down on your
feeder. You will snatch up your
binoculars, take one wild loox
and rush tci the telephone to call
Miss Mary 'Wintyen, bird-watcher
for the AudVibon Society, and tell
her to come quick.
Well, sorr e families have al
most had th at experience lately.
Almost but not quite.
The Geori ;e Leonards thought
they might be 19th century Au-
dubons discc ivering that prothon-
atory warbh t for just a moment
some three weeks ago. There on
their feeder, mixing in with the
other birds, was a bright green
something-oi -other. But they
didn’t run to the phone. A second
glance told them the truth. Im
possible as it seemed, it was a
green parakc et out there pecking
away at the ; seeds. He was fat and
sassy and, as they gazed, he gave
a flip of his olive-colored wings
and sailed w ay up high to the top
of a big pij_
some weeks before
From then on, he
feeder regularly
;he rest and they
iously after the cold
if he had made it
ice-storm. Sure
day after, he was
g his bright green
I np. gay, running off
pds in fine parakeet
mards think he must
■it in the open for a
me, probably since
in order to become
Inflated that he could
eecent, rough weath-
This
the big fr
came to
along witi
watched
weather
through
enough,
back, f
feathers
the :
style
have
good
last s
so w
iurvi'
5r.
nera
^ ^'^noui
^St fo-
lost
Feed The Birds!
Annually, or maybe more often, the
Pilot issues a call to FEED THE BIRDS.
Considering the severe weather we’ve
been having, it seemed a pretty good
ume to send out a clarion call this week.
As the freeze shut down last week, with
the sound of trees snapping like pistol
boughs crashing down, the
mought uppermost in many minds must
have been: what a terrible time for the
birds. Not only their little toes getting
Unforgettable Christmas
As expressed by writers of letters pu
blished in last week’s Pilot, this area is
grateful to the utility company
omcials and workers who gave up their
Christmas holiday last week to restore
and maintain electric power and tele-
phone service during a severe ice storm.
This incredible capacity for unselfish
f mmumty service is one of this nation’s
Ablest characteristics, a heritage that
hbodies-all that is best in the American
^cter: endurance, hard work and
““^■nent against odds.
! inspiring to stie it S|||A^ion here
not soon fgi^t G^^Bkas Day"
frozen and their poor wet feathers plast
ered into cakes of ice, but their homes
and refuges crashing about their ears. It
must have seemed as if the world was
coming to an end.
Birds are very tender creatures, it
seems, with pitifully small bodies under
all those feathers. Their circulatory sys
tems are so delicate, so frugal, that it is
necessary for them to feed constantly in
order to replenish their energy. They
aren’t eating so gluttonosly because
they’re greedy but because they have to,
actually, to keep alive. A bird is supposed
to use up all his life juices while he
sleeps huddled on his roost at night,
keeping him warm. So, the next day, he
gets up as early as he can and eats pretty
nearly through till night again. Bird-
people claim he has to eat one and a half
times his weight in a day in order to
survive the night and get going again
the next morning. The main reason, they
say, why so many little bird bodies are
found after a big freeze isn’t because
they were frozen but because they were-
n t able to find the necessary food the
day before to keep them alive throi
the night.
that s wl
FEEI
The Cheerful
" Chickadee
From "Nalure Rambles—
An Inlrodwclion lo Counlry
Lore," by Oliver P. Medsger.
There are several little birds
chirping among the trees. If we
are quiet they may come nearer.
There is one hanging by his feet
a examining the twigs of a pine
tree. It is a chickadee. You can
fell him by his black cap and
dark throat, gray back and dark
gray wings and tail. He is always
friendly, yet always minds his
own business and is apparently
' ■ happy no matter what the weath
er. His soft fluffy feathers afford
a good protection against the cold.
I now recall a very disagreeable
I winter day—on.s of the worst I
I had seen in years. I wondered if
any birds could be abroad, and
acting on the thought I dressed
warmly, adding rubber boots and
raincoat, then started out in a
! driving storm of rain and sleet,
wading through eight inches of
soft snow and slush.
i Apparently the birds had all
taken to cover, for after walking
two or three miles on both high
and low ground, I came back
home^wM|gut seeing one.
about to enter the
the chee
of ■“ '
sel
ii
thoui p,
xes
ers h,shi
of hi^ in
arouninty-
been A
quit* urs
green
POSSDl
green lini
proudly!)'
The blue~o
view quite of
has put his
hoping he m
let himself
e’s not the only one.
er Mrs. Vera WiUis
[lue parakeet. She
never see him again
she hasn’t but oth-
:eems to steer clear
irters but he hangs
ughborhood. He has
fthel Jones’s feeder
ilso “a disreputable
[ct,” she says, not
le smart and sassj'
Leonards claim so
soap. He tu* ns up his turned-
down beak at
birds!” he see
GRAINS
owner if he
“Only ’miao
“ ‘Miaou!’
‘Miaou?’ ”
Mrs 'Willis
parakeet used
tie kitten. Cle;
in more ways
he makes out
as well as ti
and that other
it: “That’s for the
reis to say.
sked his former
;ver said anything.
she said.
Why does he say
Explained, that the
to play with a lit-
rly a fabulous bird
th/an one. We hope
Through the winter
; Leonards’ friend
green tramp.
Good News
The bluebird s are coming back!
seeing strings of
usual along the
Folks report
them sitting
wires.
Everybody
the Happiness
us!
The
Published
THE PILC
Southern Pirn
Kathmine Boyc
C. Benedict
Dan S. Ray
C; G. Council
Bessie C. Smith
Mary Scott Nev rton
Mary Evelyn de
Dixie B. Ray,
Thomas Mattoc
py.
SubsKT,
Mioi
One Year
iuts
le goes to the Park-
ten and Mrs. Willis
old cage up there
ght be tempted to
caught. But: no
an breathe again:
Birds are still with
PILOT
sry Thursday by
r. Incorporated
s. North Ceirolina
1941—JAME S BOYD—1944
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