I'm No Edward R. Murrow

Well, it’s that time of year here in the North Georgia Mountains. Last week I lit a fire in the wood stove for the first time since the end of last winter. The following morning the temperature was 21 degrees at 6:30 am—the first hard frost. The day before yesterday it was 55 degrees at the same hour of the morning, and the daytime temperature rose to almost 70. Yesterday it rained two inches.

This is the season where you can start out the day with ice on your windshield and by noon you’re driving around with your windows open. You don’t know whether to put on shorts or jeans when you get up. I believe the Indians had a descriptive phrase for this time of year. If I’m not mistaken they called it the Moon of the Cold and Flu Season. I think I saw that on TV.

Fortunately, this type of weather won’t last long. Unfortunately, it will be replaced by even worse weather. One day it will get cold and stay there. That occurs during what the Indians called the Moon of this Really Sucks. That’s followed by the Moon of this Really Sucks More, followed by the Moon of Time to Take a Long Florida Vacation.

I mentioned in a prior post that shortly after I got here I was told that the county was run by good old boys who liked things just the way they are and did not take kindly to criticism or new ideas, particularly from newcomers. I’ve also told you about some of my contacts with local officials and about letters to the editor and opinion pieces I’ve authored concerning governmental issues.

More recently I’ve started writing a biweekly guest column for one of the local weekly papers. I’ve had four columns published so far. Three of them dealt with local government affairs. Those of you who live in a metropolitan area and read the newspaper would consider these columns as nothing more than mild commentary on the doings of local officials. I know that I put up with much more pointed criticism as a city attorney in Pinellas County, Florida. Being criticized is just part of the territory when you’re associated with local government. No big deal.

But recently I’ve been told that the game is played differently around here. After the first two columns I wrote were published, I was warned by people friendly to me and familiar with this area that I should exercise more caution in what I say because bad things may start happening to me like harassing traffic stops by the cops and even unexplained house fires.

A warning like that is enough to get your attention, and it certainly got mine. I’ve had a few days to think about it and, frankly, I’m not sure how to take it. I find it hard to believe that in this day and age local politicians or their supporters would use such crude tactics to stifle fair criticism. Things like that may have happened in the past, but anyone resorting to such tactics nowadays could be looking at a criminal or civil rights investigation by statewide agencies or even federal agencies.

By the same token, I have no doubt there are some good old boys in these mountains who still look at the world with 1950 spectacles. Remember that this area was settled by Scotch-Irish and Germans who were a proud, clannish and fiercely independent people. They had a history of clinging to their traditions and resenting outsiders telling them what to do. Many of their descendants have the same independent mindset. Thus, it is not out of the question that a couple of locals could take umbrage at my columns and resort to self-help remedies to me straight.

If there is even a smidgen of truth to these warnings then I have a dilemma—do I keep writing these columns or not?

I won’t lie to you. I enjoy having a public forum for my opinions and observations, and I like the idea of being a backwoods George Will. Furthermore, I don’t mind doing my small part to help make Fannin County a better place. By the same token, common sense and caution tell me that it’s not worth it to be a two-bit crusader for truth, justice and the American way of life in this small, out of the way part of Georgia if it means I’m going to be hassled. Life’s too short and, frankly, this county is not worth it.

On the other hand, I really don’t like the idea of being told what to say, and I’m having fun doing what I’m doing. Maybe I’m being naive, but I really doubt that dire things will happen to me if I keep poking sticks at the local political establishment. I may not be voted Fannin County Man of the Year, but that wasn’t going to happen anyway. So for the time being I intend to keep on doing what I’m doing. Hell, I may even write a column about being warned that bad things may happen.

And that’s all I got to say about that.

The Weirdness Continues

Okay, things are really starting to get weird in Yacavone Land.

I wrote last year about finding the severed foreleg of a deer sticking out of the soil in my garden. Recently I told you about finding a dead possum with puncture wounds in its neck alongside a heavy pallet that had been pulled out from our outdoor shower. There has been another strange incident.

A couple of days ago I was taking our new puppy for a walk to wear his ass out so he wouldn’t be so hyperactive in the evening, and I came across a freshly dead deer hanging from a wire fence at the edge of my property. One of its hind feet was entangled in the wire and—are you ready for this—there were puncture wounds in its neck.

Our dog shied away from the carcass like it was radioactive. I jumped back, said three Hail Marys which is impressive since I’m not Catholic. I’m not ashamed to admit that if I had holy water, a silver bullet, a crucifix and garlic I’d have tried to do a little magic with them also. Hell, I’d have sung Ave Maria if I knew the words. You can’t be too careful. I never let a calm and rational response get in the way of a scream-like-a-wussy, primal fear-laden, superstitious overreaction.

The obvious question is what happened to the deer? The most obvious answer is that the deer caught its leg in the wire fence, fell and broke its neck and something came up afterward and bit its neck. The deer was young so that’s clearly within the realm of possibility. However, this fence is only four feet high. I’ve seen an adult deer clear a six foot fence from a standing start with room to spare. Even my six foot electric fence is not enough to keep the occasional deer out of my garden. Moreover, the fence has been there ever since we bought the property over 20 years ago. I have to assume that deer know about the fence and jump it regularly. Maybe this deer was particularly klutzy but it makes you think.

Moreover, this is not a barbed wire fence. It’s not like the deer was caught in a gill net or anything. The deer’s hind foot was stuck between two strands of plain wire. There’s no way of really knowing but looked to me like a live deer could have pulled its foot out with a few frantic tugs. It’s almost like (and I’m not prepared to say this happened) someone or something hung the deer from the fence.

It’s possible the deer died because of a broken neck as the result of the fall. Obviously, I didn’t do an autopsy so for all I know this deer could have had a heart attack in mid-jump or suffered one of those bad side effects from medication that they warn you about in drug commercials. You know, the ones that rarely happen but sound horrible if they do like anal leakage or man boobs. 

The chances of a deer breaking its neck as the result of falling over a fence seem rather slim to me. I would think that deer are fairly tough. I doubt that they have chicken necks that snap at the slightest trauma. If they did it seems to me that you would have dead deer strewn all over the landscape from running into branches and trees. All I’m saying is that it seems odd to me that a deer would die simply because it fell down after getting its foot caught.

It seems more likely that the deer survived the fall. So then the question becomes how did it die, and I have no clue what the answer is. The puncture wounds in the neck may account for its death. However, even though I’m pretty ignorant of the ways of wildlife, it seems to me that if some animal came along and dispatched the deer by biting it on the neck it would probably be the type of animal that would try to eat the deer. I can understand why such an animal would bite but not eat a possum. Possum probably tastes like bad Korean food. But I would think that deer meat would be high on the food preference chart for any animal with sharp teeth and the cojones to bite a downed deer in the neck.

It’s conceivable that the puncture wounds came from some critter gnawing on the neck after the deer died but that gets us back to questions like what killed the deer and why there was no eating, chewing or flesh tearing involved. While we’re talking about possibilities, another one is that the deer died or the puncture wounds occurred or both things happened before the deer got to the fence. That leads us to the question of what type of animal could kill a deer by biting its neck and then hang it on a fence?

The bottom line is that I’m as clueless about how this happened as John Kerry following a terrorist attack.

One of the reasons I moved here is to be closer to the country and nature. I was thinking more of stuff like butterflies and birds than really weird things like Bigfoots, Chupacabras, Vampires, or bizarre ritualistic animal sacrifice. I  hope we didn’t build our cabin on an old Indian graveyard. I saw that movie.

The next problem I faced was what to do with a dead deer hanging from my fence. There is nothing in my mostly suburban background to prepare me for this. I suppose I could have left it hanging from the fence like some form of Neolithic graffiti but that seemed rather macabre so I decided it would be better to take it down. My oldest son, Jake, and I managed to get the deer off the fence, sever its head and drag the body to a distant part of the property for the vultures to dispose of. We put the severed head on top of a red ant hill in hopes of eventually salvaging the skull.

So there you have it—the latest strange occurrence from the Yacavone homestead. Who said that retirement in the country was going to be boring?

Fannin County Faith

If you’re thinking of retiring to rural Southern Appalachia and want to become part of the local community you need to be aware of the role that religion and churches play in this region. I’m not saying that you have to be religious or associate with a local church to be well received but I am saying that it helps.

We are in the Bible Belt, and religion holds strong sway here. It is more open and, depending on your perspective, more in your face. It seems like every other radio station is a religious station. The Ten Commandments are in the county clerk’s office. Meetings frequently start with a prayer. Faith-based organizations are intimately involved in social welfare programs. Local country radio stations play real Christian Christmas songs. The Walmart greeter bids you a blessed day. I’m fairly certain that Madeline Murray O’Hare would have a nervous breakdown if she were alive and living in these parts, and those ridiculous groups that challenge every public display of faith would be in a perpetual apoplectic hissy fit.

As for me, the prominence of religious faith in local life is no skin off my back. It doesn’t offend me, and it shouldn't offend you. A prayer offered to someone’s version of God every now and then, regardless of whether it’s your God or whether you believe there is a God, certainly isn’t going to kill you. Lighten up for God's sake. Oops. Bad choice of words. I mean just lighten up.

I’d prefer that the prayer was in English just to make sure the person isn't asking to have seven plagues rain down on me. Beyond that caveat, I wouldn’t mind if a Muslim Imam offered up a prayer at the beginning of a meeting as long as he’s not wearing a dynamite vest and aiming a Kalashnikov my way. But if you’re one of those who are grossly offended by outward displays of faith, you better think twice about moving to Southern Appalachia

As you might expect, churches are a big deal around here. One website lists 85 churches in Fannin County, and I’m sure there are more. That’s a lot of churches in a county with less 25,000 inhabitants. I don’t have any figures but I venture to say that a majority of people in Fannin County attend church regularly. Sunday morning is absolutely dead around here. Either everyone is sleeping in or they are in church or maybe they are sleeping in church.

Aside from the religious function, churches perform an important social function around here. They are significant cogs in the social machinery of the community. The two quickest ways to meet people and integrate into the local community are to join a local civic club or service organization or start attending a local church.

If you attend a mainstream Christian church where you’re from, this is not going to be a big problem. Here in Fannin County all the major Christian denominations are represented either in the county or in nearby counties.

If you are not in the Christian mainstream, things may be a little tougher. If you belong to some obscure Christian sect you might have trouble finding a congregation. If you’re Jewish the bad news is that the nearest synagogue is 52 miles away. The good news is that it’s a scenic drive. If you’re Greek Orthodox the bad news is that the nearest church is over 60 miles from Blue Ridge and it’s not a scenic drive. If you’re Muslim the bad news is that the nearest mosque is in Atlanta, you’re living in Fannin County and your neighbors probably have an arsenal of weapons aimed at you this very minute. (I joke.)

If you belong to some religion that’s way out of the American mainstream like Santeria or Rastafarianism or to a religion popular in other parts of the world like Hinduism or Shintoism then you’re out of luck. To my knowledge there’s nothing like that around here. If you’re not doctrinaire in your beliefs you may want to try the Unitarian Universalist church in Ellijay just to the south of Fannin County. From what I understand, UUs claim they have no creed and gain insight from all religions. So maybe there's a place for you there. That leads to an interesting question: is there such a thing as a Unitarian Universalist heretic? Maybe UUs burn you at the stake if you believe in something. (I joke again.)

If you’re Baptist you’ve hit the jackpot here in Southern Appalachia. One website indicates that over 45 percent of the people in the county identify themselves as Baptist. When you drive around it seems like there is a small white-washed church on every rural road corner. Most of them are probably some variation of Baptist. It’s hard to tell with some because their names do not state what denomination they belong to. For example, there is a Mount Agony Church. It could be Baptist or simply a congregation of hemorrhoid sufferers. There’s another one called Uniquely You. For all I know it could be a congregation of reformed hair stylists.

Given the number of Baptists in the county I assume that most of the larger Baptist sects are represented here. Obviously, not all of the Baptists sects can be here since there are 211 different Baptist denominations according to one website. It’s hard to keep track of them and even harder to figure out what the difference is between them. You have Southern Baptists, Free-Will Baptists, Primitive or Hardshell Baptists, Missionary Baptists, Reformed Baptists, Full-Gospel Baptists and the list goes on and on. I think I passed one little church the other day that said it was a Left-Handed Baptist church. (That’s a joke.)

I repeat: I’m not saying you have to be religious or attend a local church to be involved in the Fannin County community but I’m sure it helps. I am saying that religion is more open and church attendance is more prevalent here than in most urban areas. If that offends you or you’re a militant atheist my advice is that you look elsewhere for your ultimate retirement destination. You might want to checkout Hell, Michigan, or Hell, California. At the very least you can get a t-shirt that say “I’ve been through Hell.”

Things That Go Bump in the Night

It can get weird living here where the deer and antelope play, where seldom is heard a discouraging word but the skies are cloudy for much of the damn winter.

I lied. There are no antelopes in Fannin County but there are bears, deer, coyotes, panthers, the occasional llama and alpaca and various small furry animals that are best lumped under the category of critters. There is even a gorilla sanctuary around here somewhere though I have been told it is down to one inhabitant. If several crazy websites can be believed there are also Bigfoots and aliens from other planets. I haven’t seen any moonshiners or meth manufacturers but I understand they exist in the lonelier parts of the county. I’m told they look a lot like Bigfoot or a gorilla.

The point is that you’re never quite sure what you’re going to encounter when you step out the door round here.

With that in mind, the other night—in the middle of the night I might add—I heard a strange noise outside while I was writing. When something like that happens you have two options. You can go out to see what it is or stay inside and pretend you never heard it. It’s not that I lack personal courage or have a low testosterone level, but I opted for the latter. It’s a pain in the ass to fumble around looking for a pair of shoes and a coat at two in the morning in order to wander around in the cold and dark tripping over rocks and tree stumps looking for God knows what.

Besides, the way I figure it is if there is something big and dangerous outside there’s not much I can do about it anyway. Killing it would get me in trouble with the wildlife authorities. If it’s a Bigfoot I’d probably be jailed for interfering with an endangered species. At the very least I would shit my pants. If it’s an alien it probably has a death ray that can turn me into a smoking piece of beef jerky. It doesn’t help that I have an over-active and inventive imagination.

So early the next morning I left the cabin having forgotten the strange noises in the night. When I turned the corner of my cabin I saw something very strange, but before I get into that I have to set the scene.

We have an outdoor shower on the side of our house. It’s the greatest thing in the world on warm summer days after you’ve been working outside and are hot and sweaty. There’s nothing more refreshing on a hot day than standing under an outdoor shower naked to the world with the wind whistling through your willows.

Taking outdoor showers has helped me to understand why some people get into being nudists. There’s something very bracing and free spirited about being naked outdoors. But I have to think that what passes for the outdoors at a nudist camp is not remotely like the outdoors around here. Around here there are things that fly, sting, bite, and give you rashes, not to mention sharp pokey things that cause scratches and wounds. Running around in your birthday suit in this neck of the woods is not a good idea. That’s why I suspect that the outdoor environment at nudist camps is probably a lot tamer than it is around here.

That got me thinking about one of the essential differences between men and women. Men are dangly, women are bouncy. It seems to me that being naked and dangly is a more dangerous proposition than being naked and bouncy particularly when you’re in the great outdoors. For one thing, the dangly parts are closer to anthills than the bouncy parts.

Then the light really went on. The dangly versus bouncy difference explains why native men always wore loincloths but the native women were bare breasted in all those old National Geographic Magazines. I’ll bet the first item of clothing invented by the homo genus (and I use the word homo in its scientific sense) was the loincloth. I can picture it in my mind. At the dawn of history one of our male ancestors picked up a large pliable leaf and wrapped it around his private parts and shouted, “Eureka, I have solved the dangly problem,” while in the background could be heard the swelling strains of “Thus Spake Zarathustra.” Stanley Kubrick got it wrong in “2001: A Space Odyssey” —before there were tools or weapons there was the banana hammock.

Where was I? Oh yes, the outdoor shower and noises in the night. The floor of the outdoor shower is a large wooden thing I made. It’s what you stand on when you take a shower, and it looks like a wooden pallet. It’s probably six feet long and three feet wide, and it’s awkward and heavy.

That morning when I turned the corner of the cabin, I saw that the pallet had been dragged out from under the shower. Several boards had fallen or been torn off the pallet, and there was a large dead possum next to it with puncture wounds to its neck. “Well shiver my timbers,” I thought. That’s a greatly bowdlerized version of the real expression that passed through my mind.

I have no clue what type of creature killed the possum and dragged the pallet out of the shower. Putting on my detective hat, I assume the two events are related. I mean what are the odds of a dragged pallet and a dead possum happening coincidentally? I speculate that something went after the possum after it took refuge under the pallet and then that something dragged the pallet out to get to the possum. That’s a hell of a trick for one creature so it’s possible there were two or more of them.

What mystifies me is what sort of animal is strong enough to drag the pallet out from the shower. I think it would take one hell of a large, strong and determined dog to do it. Could it have been a bear or (and I’m just being inclusive here) a Bigfoot or an alien? Whatever it was, it had pointed teeth because it left puncture wounds on the neck of the possum.

The mystery remains unsolved, but one thing is sure. My initial decision to pretend I didn’t hear the noise is looking like the right one. Not that I lack personal courage or have a low testosterone level or anything.

Winter Approaches

I am approaching my third winter here in North Georgia. To be perfectly honest, I’m not real excited about it. While winter here is not remotely like winter in, say, Montana or Minnesota, there is a 3 to 4 month stretch when it gets wet and cold and your outside activities are limited.

When compared to the mostly perpetual Florida sunshine, winters here can be gloomy at times. There are periods when it is overcast, damp and chilly and you don’t see the sun for several days in a row. It’s awfully hard to be bright and perky when you feel like you’re living in the Middle Ages. (For some reason I picture the Middle Ages as being dark, dank and gloomy. Maybe it’s because they are also referred to as the Dark Ages.)

They say that the reason you get moody on overcast days has to do with lowered levels of vitamin D due to lack of sunshine. There’s even a name for the condition. It’s called Seasonal Affective Disorder or SAD. Isn’t it cute how the acronym for the disorder spells one of the symptoms? I don’t think I have SAD. I just prefer sunny days to gloomy days. Call me crazy.

Part of the reason I am not looking forward to winter is because I’m afraid I will get bored. The garden is done for the year, and that means I will have more time on my hands. I get bored rather easily, and I am not very good at just passing time or doing make-work. When I have time on my hands and nothing interesting to do is usually when I get myself in trouble. Boredom causes me to get cantankerous and disputatious (how’s that for a five dollar word?). When I’m bored I have a tendency to go around poking sharp sticks in people’s asses just to get a reaction and liven things up. As they say up here, idle hands do the devil’s work, and that is certainly true in my case.

It seems obvious that the solution is to find new and interesting activities to occupy my time over the winter months. All I’ve got to do is find some, and right now nothing comes to mind. Ah well, anything’s better than having to get up every day to go to work.

Switching gears, it has been two years and two months since I retired and moved here from crowded Pinellas County, Florida. When I told people that I was retiring and moving to a rural, sparsely populated county located in the North Georgia mountains some of them looked at me like I was nuts. On a whim I started this blog in order to document my experiences.

To date I have written 127 posts or pretty close to one post a week, and each post averages about 900 words. That comes to almost 115,000 words. That’s not as impressive as it sounds because I have used a lot of words more than once. It’s not like I know 115,000 different words. I tend to use words like “the”, “and”, and “a” a lot. I guess I’m not all that creative.

It’s also not like I’m writing complicated prose. Just for the hell of it I took what I have written so far in this post and ran it through one of the websites that give you readability scores. Here are the results:

                  Readability Formula                      Grade
                  Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level          6.8
                  Gunning-Fog Score                        9.6
                  Coleman-Liau Index                      7.3
                  SMOG Index                                  7.3
                  Automated Readability Index         5.2
                  Average Grade Level                      7.2

According to the website: “A grade level (based on the USA education system) is equivalent to the number of years of education a person has had. A score of around 10-12 is roughly the reading level on completion of high school. Text to be read by the general public should aim for a grade level of around 8.”

I was surprised by the results. My average grade level is 7.2. You would think that with four years of college, two years of graduate school, and three years of law school I could write at more than a seventh grade level. These scores make me think I could have communicated easily with Neanderthals. I thought I was being brilliant but it seems I’m the North Georgia version of Dumb and Dumber. Koko the gorilla could hand sign at a higher grade level than 7.2. Dr. Seuss’s books have higher readability scores. Hell, John Kerry can probably understand this post.

I’ll tell you one thing. If you have trouble reading this post, you’re in deep doodoo. You may be functionally illiterate. I hear the local high school has good GED program. On the positive side it’s good to know that you’re brighter than three of the five hosts on The View, anyone who has ever joined the Black Lives Matter group and Kanye West.

It was easier to write this blog when I first arrived because almost every experience was unique. Now things are getting familiar, and some of the novelty has worn off. I suppose I’ll run out of things to write about someday, and that will be it for this blog. That may be a good thing for modern culture and the advancement of civilization. Given the readability scores of this post I doubt I’m contributing much to the literary world or to the gene pool for that matter.