We buy our fish fresh at the Thursday afternoon Pittsboro farmer’s market. Thanks to James and Marcey Clark and their business, Hook & Larder, we need no longer brave traffic and drive to Carrboro for what’s been flopped on the dock.
James buys fresh from the big ocean-going boats that run out of Oregon Inlet as well as small craft plying the Albemarle and Pamlico sounds. Being from Elizabeth City gives him top notch local connections, but he tells me he also buys from boats that tie up down in Wanchese. Do not look for them at the Saturday farmer’s market; Hook & Larder travels from Carrboro to Hillsborough to Durham to Pinehurst, so peachy little Pittsboro earns only a weekday time slot. Have fish. Will travel.
I see more of James than of Marcey these days. She recently became manager of the Inn at Celebrity Dairy out in Silk Hope, bucolic home to over 100 Alpine and Saanen goats. You should try their cheese. You can buy that at the Thursday market, too.
I think it fitting to hold the market on the asphalt parking lot of that hardened artery of progress referred to as the Pittsboro train depot. Re-purposed rail beds are relevant rail beds. The Pittsboro spur terminated a few hundred feet north of what is now called Country Farm and Home, and when I was a boy, trains stopped automobile traffic three blocks east of the courthouse on a regular schedule.
I remember my father cursing the sight of boxcars blocking our way as we topped the hill at Small Street. Even a single empty flatcar barring only part of one lane invariably meant the brakeman stopped traffic going both directions. I almost felt sorry for the brakeman having so many of my father’s cuss words hurled in his general direction, but the old man’s fury was soon spent, replaced by the mumbled and murmured profanity accompanying every attempt at a U-turn in our old pick-up.
The truck was not equipped with power steering or power brakes or power windows or power anything as I recall, and with its lousy turn radius every three-point turn became a nine-point regimen of arm exercises. But it was sturdy and reliable, its best feature being that when you popped the hood you could see and reach everything you might need to repair or replace. The starter was a button on the floor. The windshield wipers slowed or just plain stopped when you accelerated. The sheet metal was so thick that when my father hit a deer it bounced off without leaving a dent.
The old truck and the railroad tracks are long gone now, and laughing children play where there were once stacks of steel rails rusting and wooden crossties reeking of creosote. They run around in the bright sunlight or splash in puddles of standing water when it rains while adults like me stand in line for the bounty of the county. We wear our masks and keep our distance but I still get to see a friend or two here for fresh vegetables, mushrooms, eggs, chicken, pork or beef. I can buy my wife a well-deserved bouquet of fresh cut flowers. I can buy myself some cookies from Annie at Sweet Little Something. With notable Chatham County farms like Granite Springs and In Good Heart participating, this is that grass-roots crop sharing called Community-Supported Agriculture at its finest. We know what we buy, from potatoes to pastry, is locally raised or grown or made. And we know our farmers personally, just as our farmers know their produce.
We buy all our meats from Tucker and Mackenzie Withington who own LillyDen Farms down in Goldston. Farmer Tucker jokingly tells me that he knows every animal my wife cooks by its first name. Tucker even looks the part of a farmer: big but not fat, with a full beard that makes him look burly in an outdoorsy way. He and his lovely wife, Mackenzie, have four super kids. They are a delight to be around, and we never pass up a chance to go to any of their BBQs. We dearly missed visiting with them over the holidays this past year, but these are trying times for everyone.
And now we have Hook & Larder bringing fresh seafood to landlocked little Pittsboro every Thursday afternoon. Last week their battered chalkboard advertised filets of monkfish, black bass, snapper, trout and my favorite: yellowfin tuna.
I eat like a king.
Dwayne Walls Jr. has previously written a story about his late father’s battle with Alzheimer’s disease and a first-person recollection of 9/11 for the newspaper. Walls is the author of the book “Backstage at the Lost Colony.” He and his wife Elizabeth live in Pittsboro.