I Visit the Swamp

I had to go to Florida last week to attend to personal business and have a reunion with a couple of friends I met while I was in graduate school at the University of Florida. We went to a Gator football game at the Swamp. For you non-Gators, the Swamp is the nickname for the UF football stadium. The Gators beat up on the Eastern Kentucky Colonels. In most years you would think that a game against a school like Eastern Kentucky is a sure win for the Gators, but the Gators have not been very good for the last couple of years. It’s ironic. When I went to school at UF, Doug Dickey was the coach, and the Gators sucked. I return 40 years later and the Gators suck. In between they were great. Maybe it’s me.

Meredith and I spent several days in Cocoa Beach before going to Gainesville. The experience of being in Cocoa Beach and then in Gainesville on a football weekend makes me realize that I am rapidly becoming a country bumpkin. The amount of traffic and people was almost overwhelming. I think I now understand what primitive people felt the first time they encountered Europeans with large sailing ships and guns that discharged thunder and lightning. I’m afraid I’ve become very provincial. I probably should have entitled this post “Ma and Pa Kettle Visit the Big City.”

I am not being entirely tongue-in-cheek when I say that it is apparent to me why folks living in urban areas appear frustrated and angry most of the time. I seem to recall there was an experiment done many years ago where they discovered that if you put too many rats in a cage, they start to turn on each other. I think that modern urban living has that effect on people. It’s only when you get away from it that you notice it.

That being said, there are a few things about urban living that I sorely miss. One of them is home delivery pizza, and the other is convenient access to good ethnic food. There are no Thai, Greek or Cuban restaurants in Fannin County. I’m not even sure there is a Greek or Cuban restaurant in the surrounding counties. Meredith and I made sure to order home delivery pizza and eat Thai and Greek food while we were in Cocoa Beach. If we had been there longer I would have hunted down a good Cuban restaurant and ordered a Cuban sandwich. Getting good ethnic food is one thing that’s great about living in a multi-cultural urbanized area.

Another thing I miss is fast internet. We cannot get cable where our house is located so our internet is via satellite. It’s a wonder of technology and adequate for our needs, but it’s not lightning fast. Even if we could hook up to cable, we would still not have high-speed internet. The local cable companies have not installed fiber optic cable, and the local cable internet is slow compared to what you have in urban areas. If you absolutely need fast internet, then you better think twice about moving to the country or try and find a rural area that has it. Good luck with that.

While we were in Florida we had convenient access to department stores and shopping malls. To be honest, that is not something I miss. I think part of the reason is that life is so much simpler here. I can do ninety percent of my shopping at the local Walmart. Like everyone else around here, I wear casual clothes like blue jeans and boots most of the time. The only time I put on a tie is to go to church, and the only reason I wear a tie to church is so I don’t forget how to tie one. I suggested to the folks at Feed Fannin that it have a formal fundraiser, and they looked at me like I was nuts. It’s not hard to keep up with the Joneses in Fannin County.

We accomplished a lot in Florida and had a great time visiting with my old friends, but it’s good to be back in Fannin County. Driving back Meredith and I realized that this place has become our home in the truest sense of the word. It’s the place where we are the most at ease, where things are familiar, and where we have established comfortable routines and habits. In World War I there was a song that had a line that went “how are you going to keep them down on the farm once they’ve seen gay Paree?” For Meredith and I the answer is clear. It’s nice to visit hustling and bustling Florida, but it’s even nicer to live in the serene tranquility of Fannin County. Like the Eagles once sang, “It’s a peaceful easy feeling.”

Vignettes of Fannin County Life

If you’re ever in downtown Blue Ridge, a visit to Brown’s Feed Store is a must. There are stacks of cages with chickens, roosters, turkeys and other farm fowl for sale along the front. Every few minutes one of the roosters shrieks out a cockle-doodle-do, and the sound can be heard throughout downtown. Inside, the shelves are crammed with animal feed, pasture and garden seed, farm animal products, and hundreds of other items that tell you you’re in a country feed store. Further back are cages with birds, more chickens, dogs, kittens, crickets, lizards, and assorted other animals for sale. There’s usually a loose hound running around sniffing your legs and a cat perched on a stand watching you with studied indifference. The place has the warm earthy odor that only a pet store can have.

And then there is Tom. Tom is a large white turkey with a bright orange wattle. He usually has a sign hanging from his neck that says, “My name is Tom.” Most of the time he has free range of the place. He slowly struts through the store with slow deliberate steps acting like there is nothing unusual about a turkey with a name tag loose in public. Sometimes he walks around out in front of the store.

Not too long ago I stopped at Brown’s feed and noticed that Tom was not around. I asked the lady behind the counter where he was. She told me with a straight face that Tom had been arrested by the police and was in the Blue Ridge jail. It seems that Tom had wandered into downtown. I forgot to ask her what the charge was against Tom. I don’t know whether she was pulling my leg, but I’d like to think the story is true.

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I was driving out Old Highway 2 last week to drive up into the Cohutta Mountains on the west side of Fannin County. The fall foliage was in full swing, and I had been told that the drive to the top of the mountains was spectacular. The two-lane road winds and twists through the countryside past old churches, farms and houses. For a while it parallels Fightingtown Creek.

I passed a warning road sign with a horse and buggy pictured on it. In the short time I have been in Fannin County I have encountered deer, cows, cats, dogs and various other animals and livestock on the back roads and never once have I seen a road sign warning me about them. I found it odd, therefore, that all of the sudden I should see a sign warning me about horse drawn buggies on the road. The only other place I have ever seen such a sign was in the Amish country of York and Lancaster Counties in Pennsylvania. As far as I know, there are no Amish in Fannin County. My curiosity has been aroused. Is there a family that routinely uses a horse and buggy to get around?

Alas, I did not see the horse and buggy on my drive.

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Speaking of road hazards, not too long ago I was returning to the cabin on Ada Street which stretches from downtown Blue Ridge several miles out to Curtis Switch Road. I turned a corner and there was a pickup truck stopped in the opposite lane. The driver was leaning out his window in conversation with a man on horseback who was stopped in my lane. Welcome to rural life.

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Back to the Cohuttas. Eventually the paved two lane of Old Highway 2 turns into a gravel road that begins to ascend the mountains. The road followed a crooked path upwards with steep drop-offs on one side and the bulk of the mountain on the other. After several miles I got to the top. The view was, indeed, spectacular. The road continued downward on the other side, but I decided to turn around.

About a quarter of a mile down I encountered an expensive late-model SUV coming the other way. We stopped opposite each other. There were two women in their early 40’s in the SUV. They were dressed like they had just attended a high society social function. I was dressed like an extra in the movie Deliverance. The driver asked me where the road went. I told her that I had no clue, but I understood that it wound through the Cohutta Wilderness and eventually came out on a paved road in another county. When last seen, the two women were heading up the mountain to parts unknown.

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A couple of days ago I was walking from the workshop when I heard several dogs barking and snarling near the house across the small valley from our place. The noise stopped after a time. About 20 minutes later I heard a car come down the gravel drive leading to the house and then a woman screaming hysterically in a high-pitched voice, “They’ve killed my dog. They’ve killed my dog.”

This, too, is a glimpse of life in the country.

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Meredith told me this one. Several months ago she was in town having lunch with a couple of people from the Feed Fannin group. They were sitting outside. An older fellow dressed in bib overalls was backing his pickup truck out of a parking space when he hit another car. The old fellow got out of his truck, surveyed the damage, and loudly said “dadgummit” several times. Until then, I thought that no one in real life ever used that expression. I thought it was the exclusive province of fictional movie and TV characters like Chester on Gunsmoke or Pat Brady on the old Roy Rogers Show.

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This is Bible belt country populated mostly by Southern Baptists. One of the jokes going around starts, “How many Baptists does it take to screw in a light bulb…” I don’t believe there was any real rancor or prejudice behind the joke. The speaker just need a group to serve as the basis for the joke.

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I finally accumulated enough volunteer hours to become an full-fledged Master Gardener rather than a Master Gardener trainee. I received my official Master Gardener name badge only to find that my name was misspelled as Vacavone. Folks up here are not used to dealing with names like mine. Most everyone around here has a name of English, Scotch or Irish derivation. I need to get a new name badge. Vacavone sounds like the name of a Scandinavian cell phone manufacturer or a large truck that sucks crap out of sewers.

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Next week’s post will likely be delayed. I have to go to Florida on unexpected personal business.

Local Politics

I’ve finally discovered something that’s less than wonderful in Fannin County, and it’s the Fannin County Board of Commissioners. Inept, bumbling, amateurish, incompetent, and deceptive are all adjectives that can be applied to some of their actions.

As counties go, Fannin County is small. Its population is under 24,000. That means that Fannin County has about as many residents as the City of Tarpon Springs where I was the city attorney before I retired. But I don’t think the problem has anything to do with the size of Fannin County. Having represented small local governments, I know that they can be run professionally and efficiently.

The truth is that I’m a bit perplexed to explain why the present board is so bad. My experience is that country folk are sharp and generally will not tolerate the type of government tomfoolery that I have witnessed since moving here. Maybe that will be that the case around here during the next election cycle, though I’m beginning to think there is something in the local water that accounts for the Keystone Cops performance of the local politicians since I have not heard a lot of public outcry over their shenanigans.

I don’t believe it has anything to do with the form of government which is a little weird but not uncommon in rural Georgia counties. There are only three county commissioners. One of the commissioners (we’ll call him Moe) is chief executive officer of the county. In that respect he’s like the mayor in a strong mayor form of government. However, he gets to vote on legislative matters such as ordinance and resolutions which means that he also exercise legislative authority. The other two commissioners (we’ll call them Larry and Curley) are called post commissioners for some unknown reason. From what I gather, their role is entirely legislative. They get to vote on local legislation and policy, but they do not exercise executive power.

I don’t have enough space to give a complete list of the reason I have such a bad opinion of board, but I can give a few examples.

Would you believe that the county cannot produce a complete copy of its charter? A local newspaper has been trying for months to have the county attorney produce a complete, known-to-be-accurate copy of the county’s charter. She has been unable to do it. Trying to run the county without have a complete copy of the county charter is like trying to run the United States with a partial copy of the Constitution.

Moe recently promulgated a rule that citizens speaking at the public comment portion of the commission meetings cannot make political comments. The rule is such an obviously unconstitutional abridgment of speech that it’s astounding a public figure would even conceive of adopting it. It makes me wonder whether the county attorney knows anything about basic constitutional law.

The county recently leased a tractor from a local dealer. When things started to go wrong, Moe claimed that Larry and Curley had approved the lease. Then it was discovered that Moe signed the lease before the meeting that Larry and Curley supposedly approved it. Oops. So much for honesty and transparency.

At some point in mid-lease Moe directed that the tractor be returned to the dealer. Moe claimed he did this because the tractor was having a lot of problems and the cost of maintaining it was too high. The implication of Moe’s statement is that there was something wrong with the tractor that made it expensive to maintain. What he didn’t tell the public is that county employees had crashed the thing one or more times causing major damage which they crudely repaired. It appears that the tractor was under warranty which means that any routine repair costs would be the responsibility of the dealer, not the county. Of course, repairs necessitated because county employees had crashed the tractor are not routine repairs covered by the warranty.

Regardless, you can’t just decide that you don’t want a leased tractor halfway through the lease term. It seems that Moe was clueless as to county’s obligations under the lease. I wonder where the county attorney was in all this and what legal advice, if any, she gave Moe.

Not surprisingly, the leasing company sued the county for the unpaid balance of the lease price. The county attorney made a statement implying that (a) the county’s insurer would handle the suit and (b) the county was protected by sovereign immunity. I have never heard of insurance that covers your damages when you intentionally breach a contract. I doubt it exists. Furthermore, it took me two minutes of internet research to confirm that in Georgia (as, I imagine, in every other state of the Union) sovereign immunity does not protect local governments from being sued for breach of contract. If it did, what business would dare contract with government? This is basic knowledge that any county or city attorney in Georgia should know.

It didn’t take too long for the newspapers to report that the county had settled the suit by paying a substantial sum to the leasing company. What happened to the insurance coverage and sovereign immunity?

The lease had a choice of law clause which specified that any lawsuits over the lease had to be filed in the state where the leasing company resides (which was not Georgia). Apparently this was a great surprise to Moe, Larry and Curley. I don’t know why. Most contracts for equipment or sophisticated services have choice of law clauses. One of the commissioners was quoted as saying that in the future, the county will only deal with Georgia businesses in order to avoid choice of law issues. Good luck with that. I guess that means the county will never lease equipment from major industries, sophisticated software or computer hardware from out-of-state suppliers, or the thousands of other items or services that come with contracts with choice of law clauses.

The public should not expect perfection from government. Government is composed of human beings and, God knows, humanity is far from perfect. But the public can and should demand honesty, transparency and basic competence from government. On those counts, the Fannin County Board of Commissioners is falling short in my opinion.

The reason that all this bothers me is that I pay county property taxes, and this is a good example of the county pissing away my tax dollars. Does this mean that I will become involved in local politics? Not on your life. Thirty-seven years of watching from the sidelines as a city attorney cured me of that urge. But I may write a few letters to the editor and provide information and advice to others who want to weigh into the fray.

I realize that this post is not relevant to the readers of this blog who live in Florida, so thank you for your patience in allowing me to unburden myself. It’s been very cathartic, and I feel better already. It’s been an Oprah Winfrey moment for me.

Not Ready For This

Believe it or not, we had light snow flurries starting Halloween night and lasting until about noon the next day. I don’t think it means that fall is over, but it definitely means that winter is around the corner.

I’m not real excited about the arrival of winter. There are aspects of cold weather that are fun. A few of the wintery things that I look forward to are hot soups, mulled wine, curling up on the couch on a blustery winter day with a good book or movie, and the sight of freshly fallen snow. On the other hand, winter also brings cold fingers, runny noses, frozen ears, slippery roads, ice on the windshield, and cold toilet seats. And then there is the always popular winter sport of trying to pee with cold hands. To me, winter is like going on a long cruise―it’s fun at first, but after a few days I feel confined and wish the damn trip was over.

Not surprisingly, we did not have any kids come to our door Halloween night. The wintery weather had nothing to do about it. We live so far out of the way that we would have to give away college scholarships to make it worth the trek to come to our house for trick or treat. If someone had knocked on our door, I probably would have thought it was Michael Myers or Freddie Krueger and opened the door with a loaded shotgun in my hands.

I did not mind the absence of trick or treaters coming to the door. We had our fair share when we lived in Florida, and some of the kids who came to the door were cute and innocent in their little costumes. But there were also a lot of teenagers with cigarette packs rolled up in their sleeves and five second costumes who were just trying to make a killing on candy. Punks. (Any resemblance between me and Clint Eastwood in Gran Torino is purely incidental.)

What I do miss, however, is not having leftover candy bars to eat for the month after Halloween. With our new, healthy, back-to-the-farm lifestyle, it’s slim pickings around here when I’m looking for a snack around midnight. Right now I could really go for an Almond Joy or a Butterfinger, but my munching choices are limited to red pepper hummus and peta chips. That’s great if you’re Abdul the used camel salesmen, but it’s not even close to what I crave when I go on the midnight snack raid.

Meredith and Mike truly enjoy Halloween. Even though we are way off the beaten path, the two of them went to a lot of effort to make a Halloween display at our front gate. It’s a full sized scarecrow with a pumpkin head sitting on a bale of hay. When I first saw it I looked around for the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion. We’re so far off the beaten path that exactly seven people have seen it since they put it up two weeks ago, and three of them were the UPS guy, the Fed Ex guy, and some lady who got lost and drove down our road by mistake.

I kind of like the scarecrow at the front gate. Most of the time the scarecrow puts me in a festive Halloween mood when I drive back on to the property. A few times I have forgotten it’s there, and it startles the hell out of me because it looks like there’s a weird orange-headed guy sitting at our front gate. With his flannel shirt and orange face he looks like a Canadian tourist who’s had too much sun while on spring break at Clearwater Beach.

With winter coming on, I’ve given some thought to how I’m going to occupy myself during the cold months. I’m going to work on my cheese making. There are a lot of planes, saws and chisels that need sharpening. I’ll probably do a few woodworking projects in the workshop when the weather is not too cold. The way I figure it, you can’t have too many useless wooden things.

I’m going to spend some time this winter planning my spring garden and ordering seeds. Last year I only planted half my garden. This year I’m planting all 5,000 square feet. I learned a lot about gardening in this area last summer, and I think I’ll plant a lot wiser this coming year. I’ve already decided that I’m going to plant pumpkins and winter squash and a whole lot more sweet potatoes.

I plan on doing a lot of writing this winter. Who knows, I may start on that novel that I’ve always dreamed about.

As I mentioned in a past post, I’m learning to play some Christmas songs on my bass guitar so I can play with some guys at my church’s annual Christmas bazaar. I’m enjoying playing music again, and I’m hoping they will continue to get together and play after the bazaar is over. Hell, if I get a bug up my butt, I may see if there is an old farts’ garage band around here that’s looking for a bassist.

Before I retired I never gave any thought to what I was going to do for the next few months because I didn’t have any time to do anything but work. To some, it may sound like I’m trying to find things to occupy my time now that I’m retired, but that’s far from the case. The problem in retirement for me is that there are so many things that I want to do that I have to plan when the best time is to do them. I guess that’s one of the benefits of winter. The cold weather curtails certain activities thereby making opportunities for other activities.

Wow, I haven’t lost it. Like any good trial lawyer, I’ve just come up with a good defense for winter. On that note I will conclude my case and this post.