Innholdsfortegnelse for June/July 2020 i Garden & Gun

EDITOR’S LETTER Looking Forward FINDING HOPE— AND PROMISE—IN THE BACKYARD DAVID DIBENEDETTO Senior Vice President & Editor in Chief PORTRAIT BY MARGARET HOUSTON It was early April when we shipped the issue you’re holding to the printer, and the G&G team was a month in to working remotely—and to understanding the new normal and what readers would want to see in the pages. While we’re used to looking three months into the future, our editorial crystal ball was of little help given the pandemic sweeping the world. Personally, my backyard became my salve. In between Zoom meetings with the team, news of rising coronavirus infection rates, and the shuttering of our favorite restaurants, bars, and beaches, I snuck back there to take a deep breath of nature. The Carolina chickadee…

Social Chatter GARDENANDGUN.COM AND BEYOND WE ASKED... What’s the best part of summer in your state? On Facebook and Instagram, readers told us what makes the season so special. Jubilees on Mobile Bay. Martha Elizabeth Durant Fresh produce and local farmers’ markets in North Georgia. There’s nothing like a fresh-from-the-garden tomato sandwich. Carol Wilson Beautiful North Carolina beaches and cool Appalachian trails. @williamspence Atlanta Braves baseball. @dirtroadrevolution Summer in Maryland means crabs, boating, and late-afternoon thunderstorms. @chris_janos Boating on the Tennessee River. Sandy Fowler Barrera In Mississippi, the smell of honeysuckle by the pond where I fish with my husband. @taylorlhacker In Virginia: peaches and wine. @ridingmom South Carolina state parks. Samantha Peirson Nifong…

BOOKS Welcome to Pitchlynn A CHARISMATIC DEBUT NOVEL PUTS ANOTHER FICTIONAL MISSISSIPPI TOWN ON THE MAP By Jonathan Miles Someday, if time is ever spare enough, I’ll get around to a daydream project of mine: a fictional map of Mississippi, its towns and counties drawn not from actual geography but instead from the many novels and stories the state has hosted. Just think of the imaginary road trip you could take with such a map: from Jesmyn Ward’s Bois Sauvage and Kiese Laymon’s Melahatchie, down on the Gulf coast; up through Eudora Welty’s Morgana and Lewis Nordan’s Arrow Catcher and Ellen Douglas’s Philippi in the Delta; then into the northern Hill Country to John Grisham’s Clanton and, of course, to the unofficial capital of Mississippi Lit, William Faulkner’s Jefferson and…

DRINKS Hello, Harvey LOUISVILLE’S HIGH HORSE DOESN’T TAKE ITS COCKTAILS TOO SERIOUSLY, AS THIS PUNCHY SPIN ON THE HARVEY WALLBANGER MAKES CLEAR By Wayne Curtis Food and prop styling by Charlotte AutryPHOTOGRAPH BY JOHNNY AUTRY The High Horse opened in Louisville, Kentucky’s Butchertown neighborhood last year, taking over a space that has been home to a bar since the 1930s. As Lee’s Tavern, it was the site of what the local newspaper referred to as a “battle royal” in 1950, when seventy-five Fort Knox soldiers got to brawling, leading a judge to deem it “the roughest and toughest place in town.” It later became the Do Drop Inn, noted for its large dance floor. A sign out front reading NICE PEOPLE DANCING TO GOOD COUNTRY MUSIC became a longtime neighborhood…

Iris Redux A Memphis home for Gulf Coast tastes and good conversation Now twelve years into a Memphis run, chef-owner Kelly English recently refreshed his Creole-inspired Restaurant Iris, rededicating the Midtown restaurant to Gulf Coast cooking. Dishes like redfish amandine, and shrimp rémoulade dressed with deviled egg vinaigrette, remind diners that simplicity pays dividends. Though the dining room is swank, I like the tight lozenge of a bar, where a genuinely diverse crowd of locals gather. —J.T.E.…

IN THE GARDEN A Slow-Blooming Love HYDRANGEAS FINALLY TURN THE HEAD OF A TENNESSEE GARDENER By Elizabeth Hutchison Hicklin PHOTOGRAPHS BY ABIGAIL BOBO Leo McGee has never been ambivalent about hydrangeas. When he was a boy, his dislike for the beautiful but temperamental blooms veered toward outright hate. “I did yard work for extra money growing up,” he says. “Down in Arkansas, the weather was so hot; ten minutes after I’d water the things, they’d dry up again. I even smelled the blooms, and there was no fragrance! So I said to myself: I will never have a hydrangea in my yard.” For decades, McGee kept that boyhood promise. But a few years after he and his wife, Gloria, moved from Nashville to Cookeville, Tennessee, to take jobs at Tennessee…

PART III ISLAND DREAMING UNINHABITED SANCTUARIES. HISTORIC OUTPOSTS. SUMPTUOUS PLAYGROUNDS. THE SOUTH IS BLESSED WITH ISLANDS THAT BECKON. THESE ARE TWENTY SPOTS WE CAN’T WAIT TO GET BACK TO Left to right: Marco Badalian; Mikey DeTemple Left to right: Lean Timms; Cedric Angeles; Thayer Allyson Gowdy FISHERMAN’S PARADISE CHOKOLOSKEE ISLAND florida The nearly 150-acre Chokoloskee lies atop an ancient Calusa Indian midden of oyster shells. With maybe four hundred residents at its highest tide, it has neither nightlife nor shopping malls (though do visit Smallwood Store, a onetime trading outpost established in 1906 and now a museum). What the island offers in spades is prime access to some of the world’s best inshore saltwater fishing. Seconds from the dock is the Everglades’ wondrous labyrinth of mangroves and oyster beds, which…

WEEKENDS A Bourbon Immersion AMERICA’S NATIVE SPIRIT FLOWS ALONG THE KENTUCKY BOURBON TRAIL, WHERE BACK ROADS LEAD TO NEW DISCOVERIES By Tom Wilmes Josh Merideth More than nine million barrels of spirits are currently aging in Kentucky, and not surprisingly, most of them contain bourbon whiskey. That’s roughly two barrels for every person living in the state, and enough, distillers hope, to keep pace with a growing global thirst for America’s native spirit. As a born-and-bred Kentuckian, I’ve consumed my fair share. However, I’m stumped as I study the list at Doc’s Bourbon Room, which opened this year in downtown Louisville. A back bar filled with gleaming amber-liquid-filled bottles is table stakes these days, especially in Kentucky, but Doc’s is all in on its bid to offer the world’s largest…

CONTRIBUTORS Julia Reed WRITER “Turns out in a global crisis, I’m the only one buying tropical plants”—Charlotte Autry, on gathering props during quarantine for the photograph of Planter’s Punch on page 97 “It feels a lot like a menagerie,” Julia Reed says of the cozy residence she recently finished building near her childhood home in Greenville, Mississippi, detailed in “Writer’s Retreat” (p. 110). “In addition to my very-much-alive beagle, Henry, I have bird taxidermy and tortoise shells, Audubons of hares and a fox, bird prints I’ve amassed over decades and loads of feathers stuck here and there, a gorgeous photo of elk by Jack Spencer and one of a gator by Jessica Lange, a framed eighteenth-century needlework tiger, and on and on.” A Garden & Gun contributing editor, Reed has…

MUSIC Coal Country Ballads ON HIS TWENTIETH ALBUM,REVERED SONGWRITER STEVE EARLE TURNS HIS EYE TO WEST VIRGINIA MINERS By Matt Hendrickson Devin Yalkin Lying next to the banks of the Big Coal River in Whites-ville, West Virginia, sits a giant slab of black granite forty-eight feet long. Etched into the stone are the silhouettes of twenty-nine miners who perished in a 2010 explosion at the nearby Upper Big Branch mine, the country’s deadliest mining disaster since 1972. At the monument’s base are the words “Come to me, all you who labor, and I will give you rest.” It’s a stark reminder of the backbreaking, gritty determination of the West Virginia workers who toiled in a perilous environment. Steve Earle has been to the monument, moved by its majesty as well…

Broken Open Natasha Trethewey finds healing in a new memoir When the Pulitzer Prize–winning former U.S. poet laureate Natasha Trethewey was a child in Atlanta, the shadowy space under the staircase frightened her. Her mother had an idea: “Instead of trying to brighten it, we would make use of the darkness,” Trethewey writes in her stunning Memorial Drive: A Daughter’s Memoir (Ecco). The two tucked a lamp into the nook, and crafted cardboard and aluminum foil into stars. As Trethewey revisits her past, she again turns on a light in the darkest of corners, piecing together the memories of her childhood and her mother’s death at the hands of her former stepfather. Her pain still feels primal, but the poet confronts shadows to reveal, as she writes, “the story I…

ANATOMY OF A CLASSIC Fried and True A CACHE OF HEIRLOOM SEEDS INSPIRES A MISSISSIPPI CHEF’S OKRA RECIPE By Kim Severson Food and prop styling by Charlotte Autry PHOTOGRAPHS BY JOHNNY AUTRY Hunter Evans, a chef in Jackson, Mississippi, believes the history of a place can be contained in a single seed, which is why he regularly heads out into the countryside to find them. Evans, who studied hospitality management at the University of Mississippi, opened Elvie’s in February. The food has a lot of French influence, drawn from his training at the Culinary Institute of America, and from the cooking he learned from his grandmother Elvie Good when he would visit her in New Orleans. When Evans returned home to Jackson from New York in 2015 with hopes of…

Julius Wallbanger Yield: 8–10 servings INGREDIENTS 1 cup white rum 1 cup vodka 2 cups Galliano liqueur 1 cup sugar ½ cup pineapple juice 1 orange, juiced (or about ½ cup), plus peels 2 lemons, juiced (or about 2 oz.), plus peels 1 tsp. vanilla extract 2 cups hot orange-spiced tea 2 cups milk Fresh nutmeg, for garnish Orange slice, for garnish PREPARATION Combine all spirits, sugar, juices, peels, vanilla, and hot tea and stir until sugar is dissolved. Add milk. The solids of the milk will react with the acids in the juice and begin to curdle. Cover and set aside for 45 minutes, and then strain using cheesecloth. For a crystal-clear clarified milk punch, strain a second time through a coffee filter. Discard solids. Serve in a punch…

Blueberry Ginger Muffins Yield: 36 muffins INGREDIENTS 2½ cups plus 2 tbsp . cake flour 2½ cups bread flour 4 tsp. ground ginger, divided 1 tbsp. baking powder ¾ tsp. baking soda 2¼ tsp . kosher salt 1½ sticks unsalted butter, at room temperature, plus more for greasing the pans 1½ cups plus 1 tbsp. packed light brown sugar ½ cup cane syrup ½ cup plus 1 tbsp. honey 5 large eggs 1 tsp. vanilla extract ¾ cup buttermilk 4 cups blueberries PREPARATION Preheat the oven to 350ºF. In a large bowl, mix both flours with 1 tsp. ground ginger, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. In a stand mixer or using a handheld mixer, cream the butter and brown sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the cane syrup,…

COLLECTIONS Va-Va-Vroom! CLASSIC CARS RESTORE THE JOY OF YOUTH TO A LOWCOUNTRY DO-IT-YOURSELFER By Allston McCrady PHOTOGRAPHS BY FREDRIK BRODEN On a sunny spring day, Chris Leigh-Jones takes his 1933 Alfa Romeo 8c Monza for a spin. Stretches of new asphalt thread through the community of Palmetto Bluff, a twenty-thousand-acre expanse of estuaries and woodlands in coastal Bluffton, South Carolina. Leigh-Jones fits snugly in the low-slung body of the bullet-like classic, his short hair to the wind, no cap, no goggles, working the center throttle left-handed and scanning the road ahead as he hugs turns, always prepared to brake if need be for a crossing deer…or alligator. In the distance, a group of cyclists comes to a stop, turning to appreciate the whizzing of the supercharged engine. As Leigh-Jones accelerates,…

GOOD DOG Letting Go of Leon HOW A BROWN HOUND LEFT TOWN FOR A BETTER LIFE ON THE FARM BY STACY PAYNE He was just three months old when we brought him home from an animal shelter in rural Vermont. He was small and scared, and clung to me in the car for the forty-minute ride to his new home. When we pulled into the driveway, he promptly threw up down the front of my suede jacket. I didn’t care; David, my then husband, and I knew this was simply evidence of a delicate transition. Of course, we didn’t realize at the time that he would throw up on a regular basis following no emotional trauma at all, merely after eating grass or organic fish fertilizer or chicken bones foraged…

PART I KEYS OASIS EQUAL PARTS WILD and LUXURIOUS, LITTLE PALM ISLAND DELIVERS A BLISSFULLY INTIMATE PLUNGE into FLORIDA’S OUTERMOST REACHES By T. EDWARD NICKENS Courtesy of Little Palm Island Resort & Spa / Kathryn Barnard (2) I FEEL THE FLY ROD LOAD WITH THE BACKCAST. This is the moment that matters most, with the fish in view, its tail flashing above the turtle grass. I punch the rod forward, an act that seems to capture everything I love about the Florida Keys—the quest for solitude, the possibility of intimate connections with wild things, the immersion in a world of sand and sky and green mangrove and azure water. Ooof. The masseuse’s practiced thumb somehow finds its way through the flute music sifting through the Little Palm Island spa and…

The Isle of Orleans by C. MORGAN BABST THEY CALLED US AN ISLAND ONCE, “WE” BEING NEW ORLEANS. CERTAIN old maps are marked “Isle of Orleans,” and it’s true we’re surrounded on all sides: the Mississippi River to the south, Lakes Pontchartrain and Maurepas to the north, Bayou Manchac and the Amite River to the northwest, and to the east, and farther south, beyond the swamp, the Gulf. You’ve got to cross a bridge to get here—that’s the thing. ¶ You might forget that we’re an island, though, unless you’re trying to evacuate across one of those bridges, with everybody else and their dog, from some storm that may or may not turn this island of ours into open water. We get no island benefits, after all—no sound of surf,…

Choice Picks in Northern Kentucky The bourbon boom continues up the Bluegrass State Roughly an hour-and-a-half drive from both Louisville and Lexington, Covington anchors a Northern Kentucky bourbon scene that is growing into its own as a destination. “Back in the day, Covington was on the wrong side of the tracks from Cincinnati,” says Stephen Williams, the owner of the farm-to-table Bouquet Restaurant. “But now, being right on the edge of Ohio, where you can’t get half of these bourbons, has been huge.” Bourbon is the marquee attraction at the Old Kentucky Bourbon Bar—request the #16.5, with clove-infused peach liqueur, bourbon, and a hit of blackstrap rum. It’s also front and center at Rich’s Proper Food and Drink, winner of multiple cocktail competitions, including the best mint julep at the…

LETTERS “This issue hits the nail on the head for everyone who calls him- or herself a Southerner” RIGHT ON TIME Thank you for lifting my drooping spirits. With endless squabbles on Capitol Hill, a menacing pandemic, and a skittish stock market, I’ve been in the weeds of late. Your engaging coverage of Southern heroes (April/May 2020) carried me to a happier place inhabited by my fellow talented, kindhearted Southern folk. Hunter V. Moss Staunton, Virginia As I was reading Latria Graham’s article “A Dream Uprooted” (Traditions, April/May 2020), tears were streaming down my face. Jon Meacham’s “Southern Stand” was so beautiful I know I’ll read it again and again. This may be my favorite issue so far. Janet Petorock Beaufort, South Carolina This issue warrants rereading because of the…

ARTS Drawn Home SWAMPS, SPOONBILLS, SECOND LINES: ANNIE MORAN CAPTURES THE ESSENCE OF LOUISIANA By C. Morgan Babst PHOTOGRAPHS BY MARIANNA MASSEY Inside the Gentilly studio of the artist and designer Annie Moran, okra flowers twine up a clear blue sky. Nearby, lotus leaves unfurl, damp against dark water, while roseate spoonbills fluff their pencil-sketched feathers. A Zulu masker blows his whistle under a crown of plumes. New Orleans is as lush and alive on the wallpapers, textiles, prints, and murals Moran creates as it is on the streets and bayous beyond her doors. “When I was little, I wanted to have an insect collection,” Moran says, handling a glass case full of iridescent feathers. “I was really into dragonflies. I’d find dead things and save them, wrapped up with…

CONSERVATION A Noah’s Ark for Turtles SOME OF THE WORLD’S RAREST SPECIES LIVE AND THRIVE IN THE SOUTH CAROLINA BACKCOUNTRY By Justin Heckert PHOTOGRAPHS BY NICKIE STONE It’s impossible not to wonder what’s really going on at the compound in Cross, South Carolina, an hour north of Charleston. The one off of a gravel road in the thick of loblolly pines, with the razor-wire fence and the CAUTION and BEWARE OF DOG signs, the big guard dogs glaring through the posts. Locals speculate about its mysteries, but behind the spiked gates lies not a drug den, or a secret government experiment, but an ark: a crucial collection of the world’s rarest turtles. Sulawesi forest turtles, inching their heads from under the banana leaves in a greenhouse turned jungle. Asian big-headed…

Fried Okra with Caviar Rémoulade Yield: About 4 servings For the okra: INGREDIENTS 1½ cups flour 1½ cups fine cornmeal 1/8 cup cornstarch 1 tbsp. salt, plus more for seasoning to taste 1 tsp. garlic powder 1 tsp. onion powder 1 tsp. smoked paprika ½ tsp. cayenne pepper 2 cups milk 2 cups buttermilk 1½ lb. okra Neutral oil, such as canola, for frying PREPARATION Combine all dry ingredients in a large bowl. Combine milk and buttermilk in another. Cut the dried top part off of the okra but make sure to leave some of the cap. Slice the okra in half longways and cut again so you get 4 pieces. (If the okra is small, you can cut in half once.) With your hands, toss okra in seasoned flour.…

JUBILEE France via Memphis BISHOP, THE NEWEST SPOT FROM CHEFS ANDY TICER AND MICHAEL HUDMAN, TRANSPORTS DINERS—AND ELEVATES THE HOTEL RESTAURANT BY JOHN T. EDGE Photographs by Julie Soefer; illustration by Michael Spitz From the lobby of the new Central Station Hotel in downtown Memphis, where travelers once waited for City of New Orleans trains, and where a beaded portrait of soul godfather Isaac Hayes now stands watch, my wife, Blair, and I descend the stairs to Eight & Sand. Above the hotel bar looms a green neon sign that once directed passengers to the lower-concourse tracks. Mounted on the wall like objets d’art are a reel-to-reel deck and a library of classic albums recorded by Memphis titans. Dangled from ceiling pendants, a speaker array broadcasts a greasy playlist that…

SOUTHERN STYLE Shell Games CLEVER ACCENTS PLAY UP THE BEAUTY OF ALL THINGS COASTAL By Haskell Harris Styling by Linden Elstran PHOTOGRAPHS BY ALICE GAO SAILOR’S VALENTINES Leave it to the Bahamian designer Amanda Lindroth, the style world’s expert on the island aesthetic, to revive the notion of the sailor’s valentine. The nineteenth-century art form began out of love: Legend holds that sailors passed the time during voyages from the Caribbean to England piecing shells together to bring home to their sweethearts. Now you can enjoy one as well—no seafaring required ($500 each; amanda lindroth.com). JEWELRY BOX This fantastical resting place for baubles by Currey & Company looks like something dredged up from Atlantis. Nearly every shell type is represented, from the calico scallop to the lettered olive and lion’s…

PART II THE FIRST RULE OF ISLAND DRINKING ? THERE ARE NO RULE S FINDING the RIGHT TROPICAL REFRESHMENT IS ABOUT OPENING YOURSELF UP to the POSSIBILITIES of WHAT’S AROUND YOU (AND ALSO, RUM). MAKE LIKE an ISLANDER, AND TAKE IT EASY By WAYNE CURTIS Thayer Allyson Gowdy Photo-illustrations by NEIL JAMIESON “I USED SEVEN KINDS OF FRENCH VERMOUTH IN AN effort to make palatable dry martinis,” wrote Kenneth Roberts. “They were without exception execrable, although some were more execrable than others.” Roberts, a best-selling historical novelist (Northwest Passage, Arundel), was spending the winter in the Bahamas in the late 1940s. Whereupon he found himself gravely inconvenienced by a shortage of his favorite French vermouth, Noilly Prat. I read Roberts’s lament not in a newspaper or magazine, but in a…

A CASTAWAY’S BOOKSHELF IF STRANDED on a DESERT ISLAND, THESE SOUTHERNERS WOULD READ… “I would read Shelby Foote’s The Civil War, having never given myself time to complete this three-volume masterpiece.” Richard Howorth, co-owner, Square Books in Oxford, Mississippi “I love to travel to the far-off lands of literature while sitting oceanside, so I’d choose Alexandre Dumas’s The Three Musketeers, an epic of friendship, betrayal, and romance.” Molly Moore, manager at Book-People in Austin, Texas “I’d pull The Complete Stories by Flannery O’Connor into my island hammock. Her stern moral vision is cut with admiration for the devil in all of us.” Beth Ann Fennelly, poet laureate of Mississippi “A desert island might give me the time to finally read The Mirror & the Light by Hilary Mantel like everyone…

BLUEGRASS MUSE HOW ANDRE PATER, ONE of the MOST GIFTED SPORTING ARTISTS in the WORLD, FOUND HIS INSPIRATION in KENTUCKY By MIKE GRUDOWSKI Photographs by JOSH MERIDETH THERE ARE A NUMBER OF WAYS TO SIZE UP THE IMPACT OF A PAINTING: by the number of tourists willing to squeeze into a museum gallery to catch a fleeting glimpse of it, for example, or by the small fortunes (or large ones) auction participants will bid to obtain it. On rare occasions, someone reacts to a painting in the pure and unfiltered way a woman named Lilla Mason did, when she first laid eyes on a certain work by Andre Pater. Pater is a Polish American painter who, experts and collectors agree, ranks among the greatest sporting artists alive, an heir to the…