The Right Places (12 page)

“After he bought it,” his grandson recalls, “everybody told him it wasn't worth but eighty-five cents an acre.” In any case, with his new land Mr. Tufts went to work building what amounted to a private town. It included hotels, a library, churches, stables, stores, a post office, greenhouses, garages, and the Pinehurst Country Club, which today has five eighteen-hole golf courses—each with a first tee right at the clubhouse—along with a driving range, putting greens, a lawn bowling green, and tennis courts.

“Ninety holes of golf!” Mr. Tufts was able to advertise to a nineteenth-century, golf-hungry nation. Ninety-
one
holes of golf became the local joke, with the Ninety-first Hole being the name of the clubhouse bar. Among the remarkable things about the remarkable Mr. Tufts and his enterprise was that he bought his land in June 1895 and was able to open his complete resort just six months later, in December. Builders today build slower, not faster, than they used to build. Also, for seventy-five years after its founding, the resort and the town remained firmly in the hands of Mr. Tufts's direct heirs and members of the Tufts family. Then, to everyone's distinct surprise, in 1970 the Tuftses sold their interests to something called the Diamondhead Corporation, which no one had ever heard of. There were mutterings about “Mafia connections.” But, in recent months, residents have
adopted a live-and-let-live attitude about the new proprietors, and all continues as peacefully as before.

Because Mr. Tufts was from Boston, Pinehurst became, and has remained, a resort particularly popular with New Englanders. The Victorian clubhouse of the Pinehurst Country Club and the Carolina Hotel remain very New England in flavor, and much of the architecture in Pinehurst follows suit. Driving along Pinehurst's shaded streets, one might easily be in a Massachusetts village. Modern houses are zoned out, though a few
almost
-modern ones have crept in behind the tall shrubbery. Even the name of the town has New England origins. While the village was taking shape, it was known locally as Tufftown, a name that did not strike Mr. Tufts as particularly appealing. He began casting about for another. The Tuftses had a summer place on Martha's Vineyard, where a local real estate outfit was conducting a name-the-development contest. “Pinehurst” was one of the names submitted in Martha's Vineyard, though it was not the name chosen, and Mr. Tufts liked it and took it for his town. It was prophetic. When Tufts first bought the land, heavy lumbering had bared the earth of all growth. But soon afterward the pines began to reappear. Now they are everywhere.

Today, those of the Tufts family who are still around think that “the charming sound” of the word Pinehurst had a lot to do with the town's quick success. At first, Mr. Tufts had planned it as a resort for consumptives—who, before development of drug treatment of the disease, were big business for woodsy hotel-builders. But when, lured by the splendid golf, nonconsumptives began clamoring to play the Pinehurst courses, Mr. Tufts saw that he had a tiger by the tail. Soon the consumptives were being politely but firmly asked to leave, and today all deeds of houses sold in Pinehurst specify that no one with tuberculosis may buy a house. Pinehurst is one of the few places in the world where discrimination based on state-of-health is actively practiced.

Led by the Tufts enterprises and the enormous popularity of the game over the past half-century, Pinehurst became golfdom's Mecca. Today you can get into a heated argument in Pinehurst over whether there are twelve or thirteen other golf courses in Pinehurst besides the Pinehurst Country Club. The fanciest new club is called the Country
Club of North Carolina. Though there is disagreement about the architecture (it employs a good bit of glass), its eighteen holes of golf are generally less crowded and pleasanter to play than those of the Pinehurst.

Golf in Pinehurst has, in the meantime, created its own social systems. The elite of the golfing world here are members of something called the Tin Whistle Club, an organization that derives its name, supposedly, from the fact that, years ago, a tin whistle hung from a tree near the approach to the ninth hole on one of the golf courses. When this whistle was blown, drinks were served. The Club, with a membership of about two hundred men, and sprinkled with Boston Saltonstalls and Standard Oil Bedfords, is today devoted almost entirely to bibulous pleasures. Ladies are rigorously excluded from all functions, and for its headquarters the Club uses a pleasant book-lined room off the main lobby of the Pinehurst Country Club.

Even more exclusive, since there are only about forty members, is the Wolves Club, also all-male, devoted to after-golf bridge-playing. The Wolves got
its
name from an old Webster cartoon showing Mr. Caspar Milquetoast, “the Timid Soul,” cowering under the gaze of three vulpine creatures who are his partner and opponents at the bridge table. Bridge, at a quarter of a cent a point, is taken very seriously by the Wolves in their tiny clubhouse, which has room for only three bridge tables, a few chairs for passing kibitzers, and of course a bar. Liquor, though it is consumed with great enthusiasm, presents something of a problem in the Pines. Restaurants are allowed to sell nothing stronger than beer or wine, and customers are required to “brown bag” their harder liquor if they want to drink. Clubs serve liquor, but only from members' own bottles. There is no bar in the Carolina Hotel, a fact which has brought dismay to the face of many an arriving conventioneer. State liquor stores will sell no more than five bottles to a customer at a time, but, as one resident points out, “You can go right back in and buy five more bottles as many times as you want.”

Perhaps the most unusual local club of all is the Dunes Club, which looks like a roadhouse from an old John Garfield movie and yet is, of all things, a quite fashionable and absolutely illegal gambling club. Right in the heart of the Baptist Bible Belt, where it's hard to turn on
your radio without hearing part of a sermon on sin, the Dunes's green baize tables are active even on Sunday. Renowned for its food, the tables open up after the dinner hour. “Every now and then the Dunes gets raided, but the police always warn them ahead of time,” one man says. “Oh, and they make them close it down every so often, but it opens up again right away. The Dunes is a real
institution
here. We couldn't get along without it.” And so a pattern of Pinehurst life involves golf in the morning, drinks and lunch with the Tin Whistle crowd at midday, on to the Wolves for a rubber or two of bridge, and then home to pick up the wife for a steak at the Dunes and some gambling.

There are some unkind souls who have had the poor taste to call
both
Southern Pines and Pinehurst “stuffy” and anachronistic in their struggle to remain unchanged in the face of a changing world. And it is true that with their New England roots there is a certain amount of upper-class Yankee reserve about the towns. Both are resolutely Republican, even though Mrs. Ernest Ives, the late Adlai Stevenson's sister, is an enthusiastic resident—and an outspoken Democrat. One overhears some surprising things, such as, at a party recently, a woman saying, “When Eisenhower won the presidential election unanimously …” And a Boston-bred woman asking another of her ilk, “But how can you
know
anyone from Philadelphia well enough to stay with them?” Because of its proximity to Fort Bragg, Pinehurst can say, “We could make two baseball teams out of the retired generals who've moved here.” The late General George Marshall was a long-time resident. Retired generals, as a group, tend to be a conservative lot. Fort Bragg is a training center for airborne troops, and it is no surprise to look up on a sunny afternoon and see thousands of little men dropping from the sky in parachutes. Throughout the Vietnam war, the Pines have remained hawkish, unreconstructed.

A great deal of time, in both Pinehurst and Southern Pines, is still spent discussing social nuances. How, for instance, should one treat the Raymond Firestones' head stable man, who goes to all the parties? Obviously, he is considerably above the ordinary stable-groom category, but where does one draw the line? The horsey Raymond Firestones, who have built a splendid house, are very much admired in Southern Pines. Not long ago, when the visiting lecturer at the Thursday night
“Forum” at the country club—a cultural series—arrived without his white tie, the management politely whispered to Mr. Firestone, asking if he might have an outfit at home that the lecturer could borrow. It was the assumption that Mr. Firestone alone in Pinehurst might possess a white tie and trimmings, and to be sure Mr. Firestone did—several, in fact, for the visitor to pick from. That visiting lecturers in Pinehurst-Southern Pines are required to dress in white tie is an indication of the degree to which local residents are willing to go in order to maintain links with a more formal past.

A few months ago, at a Southern Pines party, a guest from out of town was tasteless enough to begin a long harangue with Mr. Firestone about what he considered to be the poor quality of Firestone tires. The next day, the hostess called Mr. Firestone to apologize for her guest's behavior. Mr. Firestone murmured that it was quite all right, really, and then he added, almost timidly, “Is there anything else your friend would like to know about tires?”

Another glamorous figure in the area is Joe Bryan, a bachelor said to be “even richer than the Cannons”—the towel people—who has built a magnificent house-cum-stable on a high hilltop overlooking a man-made lake which he built “because I like to watch my horses drinking.”

Perhaps the most striking quality of the area is the restful
slowness
of Southern life. Everything seems to take extra long to do, and there are some people who do find this restful. Others, more accustomed to a brisker Northern snap and efficiency, find the slow pace highly irritating, and inveigh against the fact that it takes so long, in Pinehurst and Southern Pines, to get anything done. Here, for example, is a bit of dialogue between a man from the North, wanting to buy a pocket comb, and a salesgirl, overheard at the Pinehurst Drug Store:

M
AN:
“Do you have any pocket combs?”

S
ALESGIRL:
“We sure do!”

“May I have one please?”

“A pocket comb?”

“That's right.”

“What color comb you-all want? A black one?”

“That'd be fine, yes.”

“Black? You-all sure?”

“Yes, fine.”

“Any special size?”

“Well,
pocket
size, I suppose—about so big.”

“About
so
big?”

Etc., etc.

This is, of course, the American South, and another settlement, West Southern Pines, is the black neighborhood which visitors are rarely taken to see. It is, needless to say, less resplendent than Pinehurst and Southern Pines proper, and white people are advised that it is unsafe to travel there at night. On the other hand, it is considered more respectable than the black ghetto of Fort Lauderdale. One is also told that an “unwritten rule” prevents blacks from walking on the streets of Pinehurst or Southern Pines after dark. But one woman asks, with a certain logic, “Why would anyone, black or white, want to walk there anyway? There's no place to go, nothing to see, nothing to do.”

But those who live here would live nowhere else, while the arguments about Pinehurst versus Southern Pines go on and on. “They get very dressy and chi-chi over
there
, in Pinehurst,” one woman says, “but over here we're much more informal. Nobody here cares what you wear—but you'd better not be seen sitting on a bad-looking horse. Also, we're just enough off the beaten path so people let us alone. A lot of people don't know we exist, which is just fine with us. We're not easy to find, so we get lots of privacy. A reporter from
Playboy
came to do a story on this place. He fell off his horse, first thing! We were all delighted.”

And Mrs. Donald Parson, who has had a house in the area for many years and whose comfortable life has bridged both towns, says, “It doesn't really matter which place you live in. It's the
feeling
of the place that counts, the mood. It's easy here, it's relaxed. We don't aspire to a Palm Beach, or a Camden. No one cares here if you have five cents or five million. We wander across each other's lawns and gardens at cocktail time, and we're always welcome wherever we end up. There's no effort that goes into it, no striving or ambition in that sense. It's known, you know, as ‘getting sand in your shoes'—that's what happens when you fall in love with this place—sand in your shoes from these lovely old Carolina sandhills. We've all got sand in our shoes here. And once you get sand in your shoes, it never shakes out.”

Photo by Murray Radin

The Villa Cornfeld, Geneva

7

The Alpine Set: “You Can Live Forever Here”

There is a breed of wanderer that is forever seeking new and unspoiled paradises. In order to qualify as “unspoiled,” a paradise must be cheap. Even though such places are increasingly hard to find, this kind of traveler is relentless in his quest.