12 - The Pinebluff Sanitarium, Doctor Kemp, Robert Mitchum and Aunt Henrietta

    

Bad boy Mitchum (photo RKO)

     I had almost forgotten about the Pinebluff Sanitarium until Johnny Mills, an old family friend and blog supporter, reminded me of its place in local history.   Johnny is a passionate collector of history of the Sandhills, and as a native of Pinebluff, he is particularly fascinated by its heritage.

      Just for memory, my hometown of Aberdeen, North Carolina, is ringed by other little towns of varying interest --Southern Pines, Pinehurst and Pinebluff-- none further away than two or three miles.

     When I was growing up, Pinehurst was a decidedly upscale, rather exclusive privately-owned village, renowned for its golf courses.  We Aberdeenians more often than not had little reason to go there. Southern Pines was more down to earth, but still much more prosperous than Aberdeen, and at that time boasted a number of quaint hotels and golf clubs, of which Aberdeen had none.  Lastly, there was the sleepy little village of Pinebluff, which had once aspired to some of the tourist luster of its other "pine" neighbors.  By my day, it was pretty much an extension of Aberdeen, sharing its school and some of its churches.  It had nevertheless maintained a special, picturesque demeanor with many acres of beautiful longleaf pines, recalling its earlier, mostly unsuccessful ambitions to attract wealthy tourists.

      Pinebluff's most ambitious tourism project was undoubtedly a grand hotel built in 1925, an impressive Tudor structure modeled after a Swiss watch factory.  It was framed by a lush woodland of nearly 50 acres, and built to lure seasonal visitors from the North.

      Whereas restaurants in the South, then as now, have always touted "southern cooking", the Pinebluff Inn distanced itself from its cultural environment by promising in its publicity "only the most refined northern cooking."

      Unfortunately for its investors (which included the aforementioned Johnny's grandfather), the hotel had its fate sealed with the arrival of the Great Depression in 1929.   It limped along for awhile, but soon shut its doors, later declaring bankruptcy.

      A young psychiatrist discovered the property a few years later, and  bought the hotel along with its plush pine woods for what was said to be a song.  Most of the elegant inn's furnishing was still intact, and Doctor Malcolm Kemp --a debonair, chain-smoking lady's man and a Northern transplant himself--  turned the property into a psychiatric sanitarium with a minimum of refurbishment.  When I was growing up, the Pinebluff Sanitarium was to many Sandhillians a mysterious and foreboding institution.  Some of the more uninformed simply thought of it as the loony bin hidden in the woods.

          In fact, although shock treatment was used with a disconcerting frequency and some now-questionable LSD experimentation was carried out long before the hallucinogenic drug was discovered by the hippy generation, the majority of Dr. Kemp's "guests" were there of their own volition for a fairly pampered drying-out vacation.  The clinic was to a large degree run like a sophisticated vacation lodge.

     Some were not so attracted by a Pinebluff vacation.  Like my Aunt Henrietta, who in widowhood had developed an increasingly noticeable penchant for scuppernong wine.   When she showed up tipsy at church two Sunday mornings in a row, it was the last straw for my straitlaced Grandmother Pleasants who reached out to other family members for assistance. 

     When Aunt Henny saw herself railroaded into the sanitarium by one of her equally hard-drinking sisters, she steadfastly refused to cooperate. The first night the nurse brought in a tiny shot of whiskey, part of the drying-out process, and placed it on her bedside table.  She never so much as acknowledged its presence.  She didn't drink it, and she refused subsequent medication of any kind.  Two days later, when she finally obtained a rendezvous with Dr. Kemp, she calmly explained that any further detainment would result in a law suit.  She was released within the hour.

      The sanitarium's most notorious guest was undoubtedly film star Robert Mitchum.  His stay became part of Pinebluff folklore, now difficult to separate fact from fiction.

      
      Mitchum was known as Hollywood's bad boy.  He had served a well-publicized jail term for smoking marijuana back when people cared, and he was generally known as a hard drinking hell raiser whose binges could play havoc with a film's budget.  Producers were wary, but his star power was enormous in 1957 when he came to North Carolina to film "Thunder Road" near Asheville.  

     When he reported for work clearly off the wagon, it was decided by producers and insurance representatives that a few weeks at Dr. Kemp's Pinebluff establishment would be of mutual benefit to all concerned.   Mitchum was not in agreement, but he was given little choice.  Under a certain coercion, he signed himself in for an undetermined period of abstinence.

 

Mrs. Collins circa 1963

   It is at this point that accounts tend to diverge.  The only certainty is that the film star was one of the sanitarium's least pleasant visitors.  He was said to have taken an immediate dislike to Doctor Kemp, and refused to even speak to the sanitarium's occupational therapist, Mrs. Collins, a charming Southern lady who was eager to meet the star and get him involved in basket making.  Throughout his short stay he regularly made fun of the doctor in front of other patients and repeatedly ridiculed Kemp's old-fashioned spats.

     There is no documented evidence of how long the uncooperative actor stayed, though it is generally agreed that he left earlier than planned and against doctor's advice.  All accounts concur that he did not depart entirely cured, as tales of his alcoholism continued throughout his lengthy and successful career.  

     The Pinebluff Sanitarium had a much longer life than the hotel which preceded it.   Dr. Kemp continued to run the institution into his seventies; and by the time he finally retired in 1967, he was unable to sell the imposing property.   Left to abandon and still fully furnished (including a fine concert grand piano in the main salon), it burned to the ground in 1975.   I had my own dealings with Dr. Kemp and the sanitarium in its later years, but then that is another story altogether.

Your input is welcomed:  frank.pleasants@libertysurf.fr

CROSS REFERENCING … a look at other postings

 Grandmother Pleasants was also mentioned in Hotel Musings No. 2 "Grandmother Pleasants and Mrs. Kennedy";  Hotel Musings No. 4 "A Two-dollar Hamburger Under A Silvery Dome" and in Musings and Meanderings No. 10 "Ousting Mrs. Oliver".  Aberdeen was earlier featured in Hotel Musings No. 26 "Babe Ruth's 60th Home Run."   (to access, click on highlighted titles).

10 - Ousting Mrs. Oliver

Piano playing days circa 1955

        
       Mrs. Lucile Oliver was my grammar school piano teacher.  She was from one of the Dakotas, and she used to tell me no matter how cold it got in Aberdeen, that South Dakota was a lot colder, how it started snowing in October and didn't stop until March or April.  I have always liked extremes, whether it be weather or anything else; and when I was a kid I dreamed of finding somewhere extremely different from Aberdeen, so for awhile I thought of one day living in South Dakota.

     She was a little on the dumpy side, with a sheaf of salt and pepper hair piled atop her head much like the hairdos at the turn of the 20th Century.  Her 1950's horn-rimmed glasses completed the schoolmarm look.   Which is all to say, no glamour girl was she!

    I was kind of her star pupil when I was about eight or nine.  I had no special talent, but I seem to remember managing an okay-version of  “Fur Elise” at about that time.  My Aunt Ruth in neighboring Southern Pines was particularly proud of my musical abilities, and she once  arranged for me to perform on the new grand piano of one of her daughter's boyfriends.  My big memory of that occasion was when my host pulled a cord and tassel, and summoned the butler to bring me a Coca-Cola.  Needless to say, there were no butlers in Aberdeen, and I shouldn't think there are any left in Southern Pines by now either.  

     My grandmother Pleasants, who was an accomplished musician and who played the church organ for several decades, also sang my praises, but I don’t think anyone outside of the family was very interested one way or the other in my piano playing.  At any rate, I was never very motivated, and preferred playing the sheet music of the day rather than my more serious assignments.  I was nevertheless always fond of Mrs. Oliver, and I feel sure that it was mutual.

     She had her piano classes in the grammar school building. I don’t know exactly how it worked, as I don’t suppose she was officially part of the faculty; but she was somehow subsidized by the school, and her pupils also paid something extra for the lessons.  It was certainly considered a plus for the Aberdeen School, and for a number of years it worked out well for Mrs. Oliver also.

     I guess it was when I was about twelve that people started to whisper.  It is one of the unfortunate things about small town life, as opposed to a more anonymous bigger city.  When there is anything perceived as gossip-worthy, things can quickly get out of control.  Long before personal computers, gossip could go viral in no time.

     That’s what happened with poor Mrs. Oliver.  

     Apparently she was having a liaison with a married man.  I don't think I ever knew who the other party was.  The scandal clearly centered around her, and it was almost as though he were considered an innocent bystander.  It wasn't long after the rumors began that I heard there was a movement to get rid of her. 

     
     Mrs.  Lewellyn was the ring leader.  She was a former school teacher and was known as a busybody.  She was also a rather astute politician, and had recently been appointed to a place on the school board.  My mother had never much cared for her, and when it came to light that there was a petition being circulated, Mother uncharacteristically jumped to the defense of Mrs. Oliver.  I say “uncharacteristically” because both my parents tended to flee confrontation.  Along the way, they communicated this dislike of open conflict to me, and I must say that it has served me very poorly throughout life, because it is pretty certain that those who know how to confront get along a lot better than those who don’t!

      Mother did enlist some of her friends to start up a counter petition, but it was too late.  The anti-Oliver movement had taken off like wildfire, and there was no turning back.

       It split the town, at least in my eyes.   Even one of our family's oldest friends signed the vigilante petition.  The friendship didn't really survive, though the initial hard feelings mended as the years went by.  I never forgot, however, and I never forgave.  
  
     Anyway, Mrs. Lewellyn finally had her way.  The school board gave little resistance.  The fact that the families of most of Mrs. Oliver’s pupils counter-petitioned for her to stay had little effect.  It was a moral issue, and she was pronounced not up to standard to teach Aberdeen’s little musicians.

     When  her contract was terminated (dramatically before the end of the school year) I joined a handful of her students to follow her, and she tried to make a living teaching in each student’s home.  But it was a losing battle.  Thinking back on it, I still feel a tiny bit of guilt, because I chose this moment when her classes must have been so important to her, to decide I no longer wanted to play the piano.  I was oblivious at the time, and no more than 13, so it was hardly a condemnable act on my part.   

     She soon folded up shop and left the area for good.  I think she went back to South Dakota.  It turned out she had been diagnosed with a terminal cancer about the time that petition was being circulated.  No one had known.  I corresponded with her for a short time --with a lot of parental pushing-- but I wasn’t very persevering, and like so many teenagers encouraged to do the right thing, I soon lost interest.

     She died a little more than a year after leaving the area.  Her funeral service was held in Aberdeen, I cannot imagine why.  It was the first funeral I ever attended, so I remember it well.   The thing I recall the most was seeing Mrs. Lewellyn there, she and some of the others who had signed the petition.    

     There was a rather tawdry novel at the time which had a huge national success, “Peyton Place.”    It was a study of the dark side of small town America, and had recently been made into a hit movie with Lana Turner.  I remember thinking when I saw Mrs. Lewellyn at the funeral, what a great scene to slip into “Peyton Place!”    


 

... Some more Southern reminiscences

Friend Joel Fletcher, art dealer in Fredricksburg,Virginia, author and grand raconteur, responds to today's posting with some of his own Southern memories, growing up in Louisiana:

     It is the kind of thing that would have happened in Ruston, Louisiana, the
town in northern Louisiana where both my parents were born; not as likely in
then Cajun and much more tolerant Lafayette where I grew up.

     Mother told me a story about a young couple who moved to Ruston in the
1920s.  The husband got a job coaching at the local high school. One day,
just as the wife was about to get in the bathtub, she remembered that she
had forgotten to put in the window the card that indicated to the ice man
how much ice she wanted. She wrapped herself in a towel and went to the
kitchen. She was halfway across the room when the back door started to
open (doors were never locked in Ruston then)  and she did not have time
to run back to the bathroom; so she ducked into the kitchen closet and was
squatting uncomfortably on the gas meter when suddenly the door to the
closet opened and there was the gas man come to read the meter.  With no
presence of mind, she shouted: "I was expecting the ice man!"   Everyone in
town knew about it by that evening, and the couple were shunned by the entire
town and soon moved away.

     Lafayette, in the heart of Cajun country, was very different from Ruston
where my grandmother and aunts lived on what was known as "Presbyterian
Hill."  Even as a young boy I knew about the whore house on Jefferson Street
on the other side of the railroad tracks. And I grew up hearing whispers of
adultery.  When one prominent business man was caught having an affair, his
wife punished him, according to my father, by not leaving him so she could
make him miserable for the rest of his life.

     When I was again living in Lafayette in the 1970s, one day my mother
startled me when the name of the wife of the town photographer came up in
conversation and Mother casually mentioned that during the war, when her
husband was away, the photographer's wife "worked as a prostitute at the
Terrace Hotel," as if it were a perfectly normal thing to have done.

     I also took piano lessons, but only very briefly.  My teacher was Miss
Rosenthal, sister-in-law of the wealthiest man in Lafayette, Maurice
Heymann, who owned the local department store and after the war built the
Oil Center for offshore business that was responsible for much of
Lafayette's prosperity during the oil boom years.  Mr. Heymann had met his
wife in France during the First World War and she came with a spinster
sister who was a musician. I began taking piano lessons from Miss Rosenthal
when I was about 7 or 8. Somehow I was terrified of  her. Not only did she
have a strange accent, but she made me balance dimes on my fingers when I
was practicing. I was almost relieved when I came down with a very severe
case of scarlet fever that kept me at home for many months of convalescence.
When I at last recovered, I never went back to piano lessons.

     When I returned to Lafayette in the 1970s, I got to know Miss Rosenthal
slightly and realized that she was a very sweet, shy person, and I wondered
how I could ever have been so frightened of her.  By the early 1980s, she had
become a little confused. I once saw her driving slowly through town with
her purse on the roof of her car. And about this time I heard that she had
gone into the First National Bank to make a deposit wearing only her slip
and a pair of shoes.

Your input is welcomed:  frank.pleasants@libertysurf.fr

CROSS REFERENCING … a look at other postings

Aunt Ruth is also featured in  "Renata" from  Musings and Meanderings No. 4; Mother and Aunt Ruth in "Thanksgiving, Ruth and Dickie" from Hotel Musings No. 49; Grandmother Pleasants in Hotel Musings No. 2 "Grandmother Pleasants and Mrs. Kennedy" and Hotel Musings No. 4 "A Two-dollar Hamburger Under A Silvery Dome"    (to access, click on highlighted titles).

4 - RENATA

I have no photos of Renata, but who knows,

 this one just might come close ... back in the day

       As a young woman in her first teaching job, my aunt Ruth lived in a teacherage* with Renata.   They were the very closest of friends, and even after Ruth married her first husband, she and Renata --who stayed single into her thirties-- remained inseparable.

      Whether it was with her niece (my mother) or her daughter or just her friends, Ruth felt a kind of lifelong mission to help steer them all toward a better and more financially secure life.   She was a staunch proponent of  a good education opening doors, but not unlike Dolly Levi from Thornton Wilder's "The Matchmaker" (and later "Hello Dolly"), she also saw this path best realized via what was often referred to as a good catch.  In other words, a rich husband.

      With my mother, Ruth's efforts had come to no avail.   She was considerably more successful, however, with her friend Renata.

      Leon Fairchild was a middle-aged bachelor who had grown up with his older brother in Aberdeen.   Neither sibling had much of a personality, but they had a distinct talent for making money.   For a start, they had the foresight to obtain an early franchise to bottle and distribute Coca-Cola.   Once having sewn up the local soft drink monopoly, which was then a considerable and never-ending pot of gold, both brothers launched out into some serious real estate investments, the most notable being the development of an entire village of at least 100 low-cost dwellings destined to house employees of an important textile factory which located in Aberdeen after the Second World War.

      Ruth had acquainted herself with Leon at a social gathering in Aberdeen in 1932, and newly married, herself, she saw possibilities for Renata.   My aunt was very much a take-charge lady, and she wasted no time arranging the first meeting with Leon and Renata; and almost before you knew it, the deal had been sealed.   

     Never considered a real beauty, Renata was nevertheless a handsome woman with a vivacious personality, and despite a considerable age difference and little in common, she became Mrs. Leon Fairchild after only a few months' courtship.   In no time at all she resigned her teaching post, built a fine home in Southern Pines not far from Ruth, and little by little metamorphosed herself into the archetypical Grand-Lady-of-the-town!

      As a child I thought she resembled the Duchess of Windsor.  They looked a little alike, both were from humble albeit respectable back grounds, and both went more than a little over the top with their new-found social status.   She swiftly acquired what many, including my aunt Ruth, would have called "airs", and she proceeded to discard most things which reminded her too much of her previous life.

     Among those discarded was my Aunt Ruth.   At least that was the way Ruth remembered it.  Ruth could be demanding, however, and no one ever knew exactly what happened.  The fact was that for the next 40 years their friendship was definitively broken, and by the time I was growing up I never dreamed that they had ever even known each other.

      After only a few years marriage, Renata found herself an extremely wealthy widow, and she remained thus for the rest of a long life. She outlived Ruth by more than a decade.

     I ran into her once when I was visiting the family around 1980.   Mother re-introduced us, and explained that I lived in France.  By this time Renata had become so grand that she seemed absurdly unreal.  "Yes, France, such a lovely country," she said.  "The grandchildren all go there to finishing school, of course, there or in Switzerland ..."   No literary license here, I specifically recall the "of course" and just how foolish  she sounded.

Ruth 1930's

    When Ruth died a few years later, my mother was alone waiting to greet visitors at the funeral home when she saw the black Chrysler arrive.  Renata emerged, holding herself straight as an arrow despite her 80-plus years.

     When she saw Mother, she started to offer a rather stilted and formal condolence.  Then suddenly she paused, and it was as though she had reverted to a different person ... the Renata of the depression years who would pop by the house every day to see her best friend, the days when my mother was a teenager living with her aunt.  How Ruth would have savored the scene!

     They put their arms around each other,  then, unexpectedly, Renata burst into tears.  Her voice changed and all the affectation seemed to disappear.   She was just an elderly woman, overcome with grief ... and perhaps guilt.

      "Oh, my darling Jeanne," she sobbed.  "I have never forgotten what she did.  She made it all possible, you know.   It was Ruth who found my Leon for me!"

________

*Teacherage : that was a word that everyone used to know back in Aberdeen.  It seems to have just about disappeared today, as I suppose there are no longer any boarding houses for teachers in existence. 

Your input is welcomed:  frank.pleasants@libertysurf.fr

CROSS REFERENCING … a look at other postings

Aunt Ruth is also featured in  "Thanksgiving, Ruth and Dickie" from Hotel Musings No. 49; Mother is featured in "A Christmas Gift ... or the Little Red Lamp", Hotel Musings No. 51.  Renata is also mentioned in "Hazeline and Josephine" from Musings and Meanderings No. 8  (to access, click on highlighted titles).