You Know You're Living in the Country When...

You know you’re living in the country…

• When the only movie theater in town is a drive-in.

• When you can look at your potato plants and can identify three bugs by name.

• When you can name five different animals that you saw as road kill on your way to the grocery store this morning.

• When you can tell the difference between cow manure that’s been aged two years and cow manure that’s been aged three years.

• When you keep the poison ivy spray on the bedside table.

• When the back of the toilet has a stack of farm equipment supply catalogs and old American Rifleman magazines.

• When most of your clothing was purchased from Walmart.

• When you buy your morning cup of gourmet coffee from Dunkin’ Donuts because the nearest Starbucks is 40 miles away.

• When you asked to help build a float for the Fourth of July parade down Main Street.

• When the local Kentucky Fried Chicken has a buffet dinner on Friday and Saturday nights.

• When the sports coverage in the local paper includes the recreation department’s ten and under girls’ softball league.

• When a man riding a horse down Main Street is not an unusual sight.

• When there is a feed store in the heart of downtown.

• When the Chairman of the County Commission and the Speaker of the Georgia House of Representatives attend the grand opening of the local Walmart.

• When you find yourself stopping at the local farmer’s coop every now and then just to see what’s new on the shelves.

• When you start watching tractor pull competitions on RFD TV.

• When you have a dress baseball cap that you only wear on important occasions.

• When you have a dress pair of blue jeans that you only wear on important occasions.

• When you keep a clean set of bib overalls to wear to town.

• When you own three different types of hoes.

• When you start wishing your tractor had more cup holders.

• When your tan starts at your wrists because you’re always wearing work gloves.

• When the bed of your pickup truck always has bits of straw and cow manure in it.

• When the first thing you do in the morning is check your garden.

• When you donate your old American Rifleman magazines to the local homeless shelter and no one thinks twice about it.

• When seven out of ten men in your church group routinely carry a handgun in their cars.

• When your after dinner entertainment consists of sitting on the porch listening to a classic rock station, drinking a beer, and waiting for the fireflies.

• When the only sounds you can hear in the morning are bird calls.

• When the nearest stoplight is ten miles away.

• When you start to shop for a more comfortable tractor seat.

• When you see tourists from Atlanta and wonder why they are dressed so funny.

• When you start wearing work suspenders rather than belts.

• When you start thinking about buying a nice pair of cowboy boots to wear as dress shoes.

• When you have to think about how to tie a tie.

• When your handkerchief is a red bandanna.

• When you think that a three-point tractor hitch is one of the greatest inventions ever made.

By these standards, I’m living in the country!

We Make the Top Ten List, Damn It!

Greetings from wonderful Fannin County, the land of tree-covered mountains, fresh air, burbling trout streams and 360 degree rural views. Spring has departed, and we are now into summer. All the vegetable gardens are in full swing, mine included, and I’m learning how potatoes, sweet potatoes, and corn grow. I’ve got an amazing crop of tomatoes coming in. Some of them are the size of billiard balls already. My cabbage is starting to head, and we’re already harvesting kale and Swiss chard.

Gee, it almost sounds as if I know what I’m doing. I feel like I should be in a Grant Wood painting wearing coveralls and holding a pitchfork.

A lot of folks around here have vegetable gardens, and I can see how their gardens are doing as I drive around. I’m always comparing the vegetables in other gardens with the ones in my garden. As a result I’m developing a case of vegetable envy. It’s kind of like penis envy, only vegetable oriented.

I wonder what a Freudian psychiatrist would make of vegetable envy. I can picture a farmer laying on a couch in a shrink’s office being asked questions like “How did it make you feel when you saw that his zucchini was larger than yours?” and “Did you want to touch her melons when you saw how large they were?”

In other news, there is going to be a third newspaper in Fannin County to compete with the News Observer and the Fannin Sentinel. This one is called the Fannin Focus, and its first issue is due out at the end of the month. I met the editor, and he has asked me if I would like to write a monthly guest column. Are you kidding me? That’s like asking Bill Clinton whether he would like a young intern. I would love to write a column.

I’ve submitted three sample columns to the editor. Two of them are meant to be light and funny. The last one is a deep and serious discussion of Alexis de Tocqueville’s observations about Americans’ love of equality and liberty. It will be interesting to see (a) whether he deems any of the columns worthy of publication and (b) if so, which ones.

I’m conflicted on what type of column I would like to write. Part of me wants to stay on the humorous side. Even though it’s tougher to come up with humor on a regular basis, a column that’s funny is less likely to offend people. That’s a concern in a small place like this. Another part of me wants to write a serious column to provide an outlet for my thoughts.

It amazes me that I live in a place with three newspapers even if they are only weekly papers. Newspaper readership has declined drastically in this country, and newspaper publishers are struggling. I don’t think there are many cities left in the United States that have two daily newspapers.

Newspapers make their money off advertising. Maybe this place can support three weekly papers because there is no local television station to compete with them. Even the radio station choices are limited around here. I get a local country station, two Spanish stations, and three religious stations clearly on my truck radio. All the other radio stations fade in and out as I drive up and down the hills. Mariachi music and hell fire and damnation are not my cup of tea. I’d kill for a clear classic rock station to listen to as a break from country music.

If it sounds like I’m complaining, I’m not. I’ll readily sacrifice my radio listening pleasure for the chance to live here. The truth is that I’m having a ball and enjoying my retirement to the North Georgia Mountains immensely. And that’s the rub…so are a lot of other people. So much so that the Wall Street Journal just named Blue Ridge one of the top ten towns for retirees.

I don’t want other people to learn about this place. Now that I’m here, I want to seal the borders and discourage people from moving here.

Americans have horrible track record of ruining the nice places where they live. Just look at all the over-developed and over-populated beach communities on the west coast of Florida. I don’t want to see Fannin County ruined with chain stores, malls, parking meters, more fast food restaurants, four lane roads, and all the other detritus of suburban existence.

So I take back my greetings from wonderful Blue Ridge. The tree-covered mountains are an illusion, the air smells like a porta-potty after a three day rock festival, the streams are polluted, and there’s nothing worth looking at. This place sucks. You’re better off where you are. If you want to go someplace, try Hoboken or Detroit. Just stay the hell away from here.

Camping With Geezers

Joining a church is not required when you live in a rural area, but you will find that most country folk are affiliated with a church. Obama’s snide comment about people in rural America clinging to their guns and religion is true in that sense―salvation and the Second Amendment are deeply held values in the land of country-fried steak, corn bread and sweet tea. And there’s nothing wrong with that in my book.

There are many reasons aside from faith why church-going is so common among country folk: tradition, association, a sense of belonging, and community to name a few. In many ways it simply is what one does in a small town. For these and some complicated reasons having to do with my conservative beliefs, I joined a church when I moved to Fannin County even though I am weak in the faith department.

Perhaps this will explain how it is that I just returned from a four night camping trip to Fort Mountain State Park with the men’s group of St. Luke’s Anglican Church. To fully appreciate the experience you need to know that the median age of the group is over seventy. They jokingly but truthfully refer to themselves as SLOF―St. Luke’s Old Farts.

To give you an idea of the age of the group, during the planning for the trip there was a serious discussion of whether they should bring an AED in case anyone had a heart attack. Looking around the room, I thought that would be a good idea to have a cardiologist, a medevac helicopter and a MASH unit on close standby also.

The old farts turned out to be experienced campers. All of them brought large tents with cots and folding chairs. They erected awnings over the entrances to their tents and put up canopies and shelters over the eating and seating areas. They strung clothes lines to hang their towels and damp clothes. When they were done the campsite looked like a Bedouin encampment of the Wadi al Geriatric tribe. All they needed was a couple of camels and a few date trees to complete the picture.

I just brought a large tent, an inflatable mattress and a sleeping bag. I may laugh at the geezers, but by day two I was developing a case of tent envy and a bad backache, and they were still scampering around. Okay, scampering is a bit of an overstatement. I’m pretty sure Reagan was President the last time they scampered.

One of the men brought his dog. It may have been the oldest dog I’ve ever seen. I asked him how old the dog was, and he said 80. I thought he was talking in dog years, but now that I think about it I’m not sure. Not only was this dog ancient, but it was also blind, deaf and had a brain tumor. It stayed where you put it. It reminded me of a furry door stop. Now I’m not making fun of the dog’s misfortune, and I understand the bond between master and pet, but I'm fairly certain the dog did not even knew that it was camping.

To top it all off, this dog had a disconcerting habit of falling to sleep instantly and then snoring loudly. Our minister, Father Victor, visited the second morning and gave a little talk. The dog was not impressed and snored through the entire lesson. It went like this:

… Then Moses came to the Promised Land. (Loud snore.) He looked out over it. (Loud snore.) He saw that it was good. (Loud snore.) And he said, “Behold.” (Loud snore.)

Father Victor quickly realized he was sailing against a stiff headwind competing with Wonder Dog and wrapped up his message in short order. Can you give me an amen?

The weather could have been better. We had thunderstorms and rain two of the four days we were there. At one point an assistant to the park ranger came by our campsite and told us there was a violent thunderstorm alert, and if the conditions got too bad, we were to take shelter in the bathrooms. She also told us that this was the first time in 17 years she had been asked to give such a warning.

I had this vision of ten old men trying to run uphill to the safety of the bathroom in an emergency. It would have been the charge of the lame brigade. Fortunately we did not get hail, lightning and high winds, but we did get a couple of hours of heavy rain.

Like every state park I’ve ever camped at, the raccoons were omnipresent and smarter than the average teenager when it came to foraging for food. The little buggers were adept at opening coolers and containers to get at food. We’re not entirely sure, but we think one of them even took the time to spread some peanut butter on his bread slices. No one in the group remembered leaving an open jar of peanut butter out, but that doesn’t mean anything. Given the advanced ages of the camping party, short term memory was not the group’s strong point.

The main attraction at Fort Mountain State Park (aside from the chance to commune with nature and get bitten by insects) is the mysterious stone wall constructed near the top of Fort Mountain. It is a meandering line of piled rocks stretching over 900 feet. It is obviously manmade, but its origin is unknown. The best guess is that it was built by local Native Americans before Columbus for religious or ceremonial purposes, but some speculate that it was built by the Welsh or the Maya or a mystery “moon-eyed” people. Here are a couple of links to websites about the wall: Lost Worlds and Fort Mountain. 

My theory is that some medicine man ate the wrong type of mushroom, had a vision, and the next thing you know he had the whole tribe up on the mountain piling stones on each other. I imagine there were a few grumbling skeptics in the tribe wishing that the medicine man would go on a long vision quest and never return.

So there you have it. My week consisted of old farts, old forts, and old dogs. Isn't retirement great?

I Hate Deer

I now hate deer. A deer ate the leaves off one of my three-year-old apple trees and severely damaged another one. Son of a bitch! Bambi sucks!

You may think that’s harsh. After all, deer are cute animals with perky ears, large wet noses, and bobbing white tails, right? When you see them grazing in a wild flower-speckled meadow you can almost hear John Denver singing in the background as they raise their furry little heads, flick their ears, gaze around, and then bend down delicately nibble the vegetation. Aww, aren’t they precious? Daddy, can I have one?

Well that’s bullshit. When you live in the country it doesn’t take long to realize that deer are voracious, vicious, destructive, and over-populated pests. They eat your shrubbery, fruit trees and vegetables, and every now and then one jumps through your front windshield as you are driving down the road. The chapter on nuisance animals in the Master Gardener Handbook lists deer are right up there with armadillos, gophers, mice, moles, raccoons, and rats.

Deer are not cute. The more you’re around them the more you realize that they have sharp pointed faces and look like large rats (which seems altogether appropriate considering what pests they are).

PETA-inspired animal lovers, eco-terrorists, tree huggers and metrosexuals will protest that people are invading deer environment and crowding the deer. That’s not really true either. Scientists say that there are more white-tailed deer in this country now than there were when Europeans came to the New World. There are hoards of them, and I think most of them live in North Georgia. Hardly a day goes by that I do not see deer as I drive around.

There are so many white-tailed deer in the United States that they are in constant danger of over-grazing their food supply and starving to death. Deer hunting is more than a sport; it is a necessity if the deer population is to survive.

You see, deer are not creatures of the deep woods. They live on the margins of forests near cleared areas, pastures, fields and meadows. While they will eat anything including twigs and bark, they prefer grass and succulent leaves from low-lying shrubs. Grass and shrubs grow only in open areas where sunlight can penetrate to the ground. Modern development has created the conditions for a deer population explosion. The truth is that deer are invading our space and crowding us out and not the other way around.

I suppose it was inevitable that my apple trees would be attacked. Everyone around here told me it would happen, but I got lulled into a false sense of security by the fact that it had not happened until now. Meredith and I sprayed deer repellant and spread our used cat litter around the apple trees. We hung chimes and fluttering ribbons around the trees. We even hung silver garland from Christmas around the trees. My little apple orchard looked like a campsite that had been abandoned by a bunch of gay gypsies and smelled like the ass end of a cat, but that was not enough to deter a deer.

What really pisses me off is that the deer attacked the tree in the middle of the day. Deer typically browse at dawn and dusk and lay low during the day. Meredith pulled weeds from around the apple trees just that morning. The brazenness of a midday deer attack is the deer equivalent of the one finger salute.

Well, I’m going to take this laying down. As soon as I finish this post I’m heading to Tractor Supply to buy the material to make an electric fence. Not just any electric fence, mind you. I intend to get a solar powered electric fence charger with a capacitor that will rival Old Sparky when it discharges. I want one so powerful that seismographs in Peru will register a 6.8 on the Richter scale if a deer touches the fence. I want one with so much current that it will cause mutations. I want to see deer jerky hanging from the fence.

If you think I am being vengeful, vindictive and excessive, then consider that it takes several years for apple trees to begin bearing a decent amount of fruit. Now I have to replace the tree that the deer ate and start over again.

Let me digress for a moment. Ancient Rome fought two wars with Carthage. After Rome won the first one, it signed a treaty with Carthage. The Carthaginians promised never to start another war with Rome. Years later, Carthage attacked Rome again. After Rome won the second war, it leveled the city of Carthage to the ground and salted the earth it stood on so nothing would ever grow there again. You know what? Rome never had a problem with Carthage again. That’s called the Carthaginian Solution.

I believe there are times when the Carthaginian Solution is required, and this is one of them. Mr. Deer should have read his history and thought of that before he started messing around with my apple trees.