Indholdsfortegnelse for October/November 2019 i Garden & Gun

LETTERS “As we say here in the South, ‘He was raised right, not jerked up’” PLENTY TO GO AROUND Reading the August/September 2019 issue, I marveled at a couple who collect buildings, laughed out loud at the naming of a dog, snickered at Elvis and creative cussin’, cried at the saving of a sea turtle, and got hungry from all the delicious food and drinks. All that before 8:00 a.m. Suzanne Perry Wright Bradenton, Florida Friends were coming over for dinner and I wanted to make something that celebrated the South. I love your magazine and really appreciate your online content, so I went to your website and did that thing great hosts advise against: tried a new recipe on guests. I went with the sheet cake recipe that includes…

SPORTING SCENE Top of the Field MEET THE GEORGIA TRAINER AT THE PINNACLE OF DOG HANDLING By Tom Keer PHOTOGRAPH BY ANDREW KORNYLAK Summertime on the South Dakota prairie is stunningly gorgeous. Hills roll on and on under a giant blue sky, and when the winds gust, the sweet smell of wheat, alfalfa, and corn silage fills the air. Enormous green fields extend nearly forever, studded with bursts of sunflowers. On a clear night you’re bound to see a shooting star. Soaking it all in from atop Patrón, his Tennessee walking horse, is professional dog trainer and handler Luke Eisenhart. He’s traveled from South Georgia to these cooler climes to work a string of thirty-five English pointers and setters, either for eventual competition or for hunters across the country, as…

MUSIC The New String King BLENDING TRADITION, OTHERWORLDLY GUITAR CHOPS, AND AN EXPLORATORY SPIRIT, BILLY STRINGS IS BRINGING BLUEGRASS INTO THE FUTURE By Matt Hendrickson PHOTOGRAPHS BY ROBBY KLEIN It’s a sweltering afternoon in New Martinsville, West Virginia, the sun and humidity punishing workers who are readying the stage for the opening night of the Back Home Festival, a celebration of Appalachian sounds and community set in a grassy field just off Main Street. A black and silver tour bus idles behind the stage, the inside cool, hushed, and dark. It’s a little past 2:00 p.m., and Billy Strings has just woken up, with a shaggy bed head. Wearing blue jeans and a white T-shirt emblazoned with the logo of bluegrass legends Hot Rize, he squints out the window. “Wait,…

ANATOMY OF A CLASSIC Hill Country Deluxe HOW DOES A TEXAS CHEF DO CHICKEN-FRIED STEAK? BIGGER AND BETTER, OF COURSE By Kim Severson In the late 1800s, when chicken-fried steak started to catch on in Texas and beyond, cooks did what they could to tame tough, inferior cuts of meat into fork-tender submission. They pounded them with hammers, smacked them with mallets, or even took to them with the edges of sturdy plates—just as they do today. Food and prop styling by Charlotte AutryPHOTOGRAPHS BY JOHNNY AUTRY; ILLUSTRATION BY LARA TOMLIN At Emma + Ollie, a restaurant in a charming little house in Fredericksburg, Texas, Rebecca Rather cuts to the chase: She starts with slices of grass-fed beef tenderloin. Because the tenderloin is so soft, it takes only a few…

JUBILEE College-Town Flavor AT THEIR NEW SPOT IN A CONVERTED RANCH HOUSE, TARASQUE CUCINA’S JOHN AND LAUREN STOKES BRING A DELIGHTFULLY HOMEMADE TASTE OF FUN TO OXFORD BY JOHN T. EDGE Illustration by Michael SpitzPHOTOGRAPHS BY RORY DOYLE College towns are outposts of oddity in a sea of conformity. That’s the promise, anyway. When I moved to Oxford, Mississippi, in 1995, I fell for the Hoka, where a local named Ronzo screened art-house films and served dense and delicious fudge pies in an old warehouse near the courthouse square. Two years in, I became a regular at Don Pancho’s, a brown-bag Dominican restaurant in a squat shed across from Second Baptist Church, where Maria and Dario served a vinegar-and-onion-smothered catfish escabeche that I chase today like a marathoner striding toward…

IN THE GARDEN Green Peace A WESTERN NORTH CAROLINA HIDEAWAY WHERE MYSTERIOUS MOSS ENCHANTS EVERYTHING IT TOUCHES By CJ Lotz PHOTOGRAPHS BY TIM ROBISON There is no room for bad feelings in the moss garden. No anxious thoughts are allowed, explains Jacquelyn Rogow as she stretches out her arms and balance-beam walks a narrow wooden bridge over a tinkling creek. Swaths of moss in every shade—olive, lime, sage, chartreuse; you never knew there could be so many greens—climb the hill above her, over logs and down rocks, a nearly two-acre mountainside nirvana of soft tufts. “Under the trees here can be ten degrees cooler than outside the garden,” Rogow says, her eyes wandering across a carpet of moss edged by ferns. “It’s a place of personal refuge. If things get…

WEEKENDS The Show Goes On A NEW AGE DAWNS FOR THE SOUTH’S GRANDEST THEATERS By Caroline Sanders PHOTOGRAPH BY JENNIFER KIELICH James Shaw When a new wave of Southern theaters lit up downtowns in the first decades of the twentieth century—vaudeville playhouses in the early 1900s and movie palaces in the 1920s—no expense was too great. Intricate plasterwork decorated opera boxes and prosceniums, crimson velvet curtains and matching seats adorned auditoriums, and orchestras and Wurlitzer organs played scores for silent movies. But as TV rose to prominence in the second half of the century and ticket holders relocated to the suburbs, these once-grand show places fell on hard times, threatened with becoming adult movie houses, storage spaces, even parking lots. Today many of the South’s cherished theaters are in the…

Check Out Our New Book! Book: Jacqueline Stofsick My daughter, Rose, is lucky to have a number of strong women in her life. From her mom to her grandmothers, she doesn’t have to look far for role models. It doesn’t hurt that she’s also growing up in a region known for the original steel magnolias. Available October 29, our latest book, Southern Women, edited by deputy editor Amanda Heckert, includes more than a hundred inspiring stories of triumph, grit, and grace, featuring both icons and overlooked visionaries from around the region. It’s an incredible portrait of Southern women today, and I plan to make sure Rose has a copy on her shelf for years to come.…

BOOKS An Overdue Spotlight WITH A NEW SHORT STORY COLLECTION, A VIRGINIA WRITER GETS THE ACCLAIM SHE DESERVES By Jonathan Miles In a just world, Nancy Hale (1908–1988) would need no introduction. Her name would be soaked into the American book consciousness as thoroughly as those of her contemporaries F. Scott Fitzgerald and Thomas Wolfe. But the world isn’t just, as we all know or eventually learn, and thus chances are slim that you’ve come across mention of her name, much less ever read a sentence of hers. Hale wrote bits of everything (memoirs, plays, biography, children’s books), but the voltage ran highest and hottest in her fiction: in her eight novels, such as her 1942 best seller, The Prodigal Women, but especially in her hundred-plus short stories, so many…

Chicken-Fried Tenderloin with Cream Gravy, Hash Browns, and Eggs Yield: 4 servings For the tenderloin: INGREDIENTS 1 lb. beef tenderloin 1½ cups flour 2 tsp. kosher salt 2 tsp. freshly ground pepper 1 tsp. smoked paprika 1 egg ½ cup milk ½ to 1 cup vegetable oil (enough to cover the steaks halfway up their sides when frying) PREPARATION Cut the beef tenderloin into 4 pieces, each weighing 4 ounces. Put the steaks in a resealable plastic bag or between 2 sheets of plastic wrap and gently pound to about ¼ inch thick using the flat side of a mallet or the bottom of a pan. Mix flour, salt, pepper, and paprika in one wide, shallow bowl or pie plate. In another, whisk egg, then add milk and whisk to…

MADE IN THE SOUTH The Write Stuff AT THEIR NEW ORLEANS LETTERPRESS STUDIO, TWO SISTERS CRAFT THE MOST BEAUTIFUL STATIONERY IN THE SOUTH By Jenny Everett PHOTOGRAPHS BY DENNY CULBERT It’s fitting that one of the owners of Scriptura—a New Orleans letterpress studio filled with antique presses and a huge array of stunning custom and ready-to-mail stationery and invitations—claims to have the best thank-you note story ever. “There’s always a dog or two in our shop—three if no one’s looking,” says Margaret Jones, who opened Scriptura with her sister, Sallie Mykris, in 1995. One of those shop dogs is Rupert, a mixed breed Jones adopted from the Louisiana SPCA. She became so enamored with the four-legged family member that she created a formal birth announcement at Scriptura with a photo…

HOMEPLACE Shape Shifter SOUTHERN COMFORTS WARM UP A MODERN DESIGN IN DALLAS By Tom Foster Styling by Adam Fortner; floral design by Haile WossenPHOTOGRAPHS BY LISA PETROLE Ab Atkins III riffles through a pile of yellowed photos on his kitchen countertop in Dallas’s Devonshire neighborhood. Here’s a photo of the house Atkins grew up in, a tidy columned affair amid the tall pines in Homer, Louisiana. One of the longleaf pine plantation that his great-great-granddad founded outside of Homer. There’s his daddy and his granddad Atkins, in bow ties and double-breasted suits with pocket squares. And there’s Ross Barnett, his other grandfather, an infamous segregationist governor of Mississippi, next to a photo of his mother, a teacher who, on the other hand, dedicated more than a decade to educating black…

Coming Attractions Star theaters readying for their second acts Alameda Theater San Antonio, Texas Built in 1949, this Mexican American movie palace is undergoing a $23 million rehab that includes restoring murals depicting the histories of Texas and Mexico. When the Latino arts venue reopens, Texas Public Radio will also call it home. Granada Theatre Bluefield, West Virginia Once a popular train stopover, Bluefield, known as Little New York, boasted four major theaters. Today only the 1920s Granada still stands, and a local preservation group rallied the community to restore the aging building and repair its Wurlitzer organ. The Rialto El Dorado, Arkansas Constructed during the late 1920s oil boom and a shining example of Classical Revival architecture, the Rialto will soon embark on a top-to-bottom renovation and plans to…

CONTRIBUTORS “Bless his heart, Pat loved rich anything, even if a recipe didn’t call for it” Cassandra King Conroy on the late Pat Conroy, p. 36 Andrew Kornylak PHOTOGRAPHER He can handle dogs. He wrangled three of them for the April/May 2017 tenth-anniversary cover of Garden & Gun. But the Chapel Hill, North Carolina–based lensman Andrew Kornylak faced a new challenge when he photographed three different mammals—dog, horse, and man—on the plains near Isabel, South Dakota, for this issue’s cover. “I grew up riding horses, but ones built to work are another thing,” he says. “Patrón is a beautiful but rugged horse, and you could feel the energy coming off him. He radiates this sense of power.” Kornylak needed to channel that energy while also capturing the dog’s focus and…

The Many Faces of Ray McKinnon THERE MAY BE NO MORE VERSATILE A SOUTHERN ACTOR, WRITER, AND DIRECTOR THAN THIS SON OF GEORGIA By Tommy Tomlinson Styling by Tanya Gill/ICONHOUSE; grooming by Andrea Pezzillo for Exclusive ArtistsPHOTOGRAPHS BY AUSTIN HARGRAVE INTERVIEW On film, Ray McKinnon has punched out George Clooney (in O Brother, Where Art Thou?) and been outcoached by Sandra Bullock (in The Blind Side). On TV, he played a doomed preacher on Deadwood and a crafty U.S. attorney in Sons of Anarchy. In real life, he owns an Oscar for The Accountant—a short film he wrote, starred in, directed, and coproduced—and a Peabody for Rectify, the TV series he created about a man wrongly imprisoned for nineteen years who returns to his hometown and tries to start over. That…

Seeds of a Story A charming garden memoir digs deep Jacqueline Stofsick (2) Preserving Our Roots ambles like a soul-affirming front-porch conversation with a country grandpa who has earned each of his life lessons but is willing to share. Every fall for more than forty years, John Coykendall, master gardener at Blackberry Farm in Walland, Tennessee, returns to Washington Parish, Louisiana—a tight-knit community he first visited with a friend in the 1970s—to tend to his friendships with farmers, trade stories and seeds, collect recipes such as wild duck braised in satsuma juice, and record it all in his journals. He presents those pages in this cookbook–memoir–garden guide, revealing his sketches, notes, tidbits such as how to tell goobers from peanuts, and this jingle about watermelon: “Eat the meat— / Preserve…

ASK G&G Fixing Dinner SOCIAL SHAKE-UPS, WESTERN KIN, AND QUAIL STRUTTING By Guy Martin ILLUSTRATION BY BRITT SPENCER Q Inviting only couples to our dinner parties is wearing thin. How do we break out of it? A Steering a plow behind a mule is tough duty. When the share gets tangled in an old stump root, or the mule gets hung up in the traces, you can have a dickens of a time keeping in your furrow. Not to pour too much opprobrium on your supercozy dinner set—or on tilling your fields with a one-furrow mule, if that’s your thing—but why you’d restrict yourself to what I’ll call the Totalitarian State of Coupledom would be the better question. The problem: Inviting couples is safe. A great dinner table wants some…

TOOLS Dream Boats SEVEN GRAVY SERVERS TO SUIT EVERY TASTE By Haskell Harris and Phillip Rhodes Styling by Miako KatohPHOTOGRAPHS BY JEFFREY WESTBROOK BIRD IN THE HAND How’s this for a quintessentially autumnal addition to a Thanksgiving spread: the glass pheasant gravy boat by Godinger, complete with a silver-plated feather serving ladle ($40; godinger.com). EAT YOUR GREENS Naturalistic designs by the late-nineteenth-century Portuguese ceramist Raphael Bordallo Pinheiro remain in production today, including his take on a gravy boat in the form of a cabbage leaf ($28; us.bordallopinheiro.com). SHINE RIGHT  A streamlined gravy boat in durable, sturdy Italian pewter, like this one from Match, is always at home on a holiday table, whether yours leans modern or traditional ($215; match1995.com). GRECIAN BEAUTY  The Aegean sauce boat by L’Objetis like something dreamed…

THE CHEF RECOMMENDS: Pickled Muscadines Yield: 1 quart INGREDIENTS 1 pint muscadine grapes, halved, with seeds removed ½ cup white wine vinegar ½ cup verjus* 1 bay leaf 1 clove 1½ tsp. fennel seeds, toasted 1½ tsp. coriander seeds, toasted PREPARATION Place grapes in a 1-quart container. Add vinegar, verjus, and all spices. Seal and allow to rest at room temperature for 24 hours. Store in the refrigerator for up to 2 weeks. The sweet-and-sour grapes are a perfect accompaniment to a salad or fresh fish. * Find verjus (the juice of high-acid, unripe grapes) at gourmet markets, or substitute riesling or sauvignon blanc.…

FOR THE LOVE OF QUAIL When the Rollins family isn’t overseeing a vast business empire and philanthropic foundations, you’ll find them among the Old Florida live oaks and cabbage palms of Blue Cypress Ranch, where the bobwhite is king—and a kennel of American-bred British Labrador retrievers is turning heads in the dog world BY T. EDWARD NICKENS PHOTOGRAPHS BY PETER FRANK EDWARDS WHEN R. RANDALL ROLLINS WAS A CHILD, perhaps four or five years old, he would follow his father on their North Georgia farm, hunting quail in the rolling mountains of Catoosa County just shy of the Tennessee state line. The family had eighty acres of land and a house built from timber they’d cut themselves. They grew cotton, corn, and sweet potatoes, and raised chickens, hogs, and cows.…