An Early Victory

In the old days of warfare, armies did not fight in the winter but when spring came it was back to the battlefield. My war against garden terrorists is like that. In the winter the bugs, pests and creatures that attack my garden go elsewhere, and I get a break from my battles defending truth, justice, the American way of life and my produce.

But now spring is here now, and my garden is planted and starting to grow. So the war has been renewed, and I need to be on constant alert against all the flying, hopping, leaping, crawling and burrowing creatures—basically, every frigging thing in nature—that wants to freeload on my harvest. To paraphrase a famous adage, eternal vigilance is the price of vegetables.

I am happy to report that the YGDF (Yacavone Garden Defense Forces) have scored an early and significant victory over the garden terrorists. The other night Meredith was standing at the kitchen window, and she spotted a groundhog crawling slowly and stealthily toward the garden. She called Jake, and he dispatched it with a well-aimed .22 round from the kitchen porch.

I know it’s not as exciting and dramatic as Seal Team Six killing Osama bin Laden during a nighttime raid on a fortified compound in Abbottabad. This was much more causal. Jake was wearing flip-flops and shorts, and I was standing in my bare feet whispering encouragement through a screened window while sipping a pre-dinner vodka as it all want down. The only casualty was when I stubbed my toe trying to find my sandals so I could go down and observe the dead groundhog. Even so, killing Osama bin Groundhog this early in the season before he had a chance to fuck with my cabbages is a big deal.

There was much rejoicing and congratulating over the kill. Meredith got kudos for spotting the furry little bastard, Jake got accolades for hitting it from the kitchen porch at about 30 yards, and I got credit for sighting the rifle in so accurately.

The next day Jake skinned the groundhog and reports that it had a lot of meat on the flanks and across the shoulders and chest. I can see us trying to make groundhog stew if we ever shoot another one. Put enough onions, peppers, garlic and hot sauce on anything, and it’s probably edible after a few beers. I’m not sure what his plan is for the groundhog skin. It’s too big to make a furry koozie.

I realize that to some of you this may seem barbaric. But you probably live in a nice deed restricted community surround by thousands of people, and your garden consists of a couple of pots with tomato plants. You may see a raccoon or possum every now and then, but nature mostly stays out of your business.

Things are different here. We have to contend with garden pests that can decimate a crop of cabbages overnight, flying squirrels that chew through wood and nest in your attic, deer that destroy your shrubs and flowers, borer bees that tunnel into your wood siding, wasps and hornets that nest under your steps and bears that dig through your trash and wreck your bird feeders. Around here nature is not something you observe on weekend outings but something that’s in your face every day.

The goal is always peaceful coexistence but it takes two to tango, and if the wildlife is not going to cooperate then more strenuous measures are needed. Just the other evening I spoke with a guy who says he’s shot 81 squirrels over the past few years to protect his bird feeder. That may seem excessive to you but to me it shows that squirrels are abundant, breed easily and favor human wave tactics to get at your stuff. I assure you, there is no threat of squirrel extinction. Two years ago we were overrun with squirrels. Shooting a squirrel in these parts is not like killing the last Dodo or Tasmanian Tiger. It’s more like swatting a fly.

I may complain about wildlife attacking my garden but I hope it stays that way around here.

The population of Fannin County is under 25,000—slightly less than the population of Tarpon Springs, Florida. In the last year or so there been increasing signs that more people are starting to move here. There is new commercial development along the highway, and both the county and the City of Blue Ridge report that applications for building permits have increased. I have plenty of anecdotal evidence that there is a wave of people getting ready to retire to our area.

My great fear is that Fannin County will lose its rural character in the coming years. I remember reading that one of the early American pioneers knew that an area was becoming too settled when he could see the smoke of his neighbor’s chimney. I understand the sentiment completely. In my book the best neighbors are those that are separated from you by a couple of acres, a stand of trees and a barbed wire fence.

And if preserving the rural character of Fannin County means that I have to contend with beasties and pests, so be it.

I've Been Fishing

Jake and Frank Johnson and a big grouper

Yours truly has been a very busy guy the last couple of weeks. Jake graduated from FSU with his master’s degree in finance, and I took the opportunity to go to Tallahassee for four days of fishing in the Gulf of Mexico with him. The fishing was great, and the time with Jake was even better. While I was there my Clearwater buddy, Larry, invited Jake and I to go to the Bahamas with him on his boat to do some fishing. Of course, we accepted. I drove back to Fannin County after fishing with Jake, and four days later turned around and drove to Clearwater, Florida, for the Bahamas trip.

In the mean time, Jake had a job interview at Lockheed-Martin in Orlando. He interviewed in the morning and received a text that afternoon while driving to Clearwater to Larry’s house that he was going to get a job offer. Needless to say, that put him and Meredith and me in a great mood.

I got to Clearwater on Tuesday, the day after Jake’s interview. I don’t do long driving well. I find it incredibly boring, and I start to go to sleep after a few hours on the road. It’s a nine hour trip to Clearwater, and it’s one that I did too many times when we were moving up here. Thanks to two cups of coffee and a large Red Bull I made the trip safely albeit a little wired.

On Wednesday we did last minute shopping and loading of Larry’s boat. On Thursday morning at 3:30 a.m. we departed for West Palm towing the boat. By 8:30 a.m. the boat was in the water, and we had cracked the first beers.

Larry recently repowered his boat with twin 300 horsepower engines. The boat is capable of going over 60 miles an hour. I learned on this trip that it is impossible to drink a beer or eat chicken wings in an open boat going over 40 miles an hour. God knows I tried. It's a three hour boat trip, and I was hungry and thirsty. I arrived at Grand Cay, Bahamas, wearing beer and chicken wings.

Grand Cay is one of the northernmost islands in the Bahamas. It’s small with a population of just under 400 people according to the 2010 Bahamian census. Larry has been going there since he was a young man and may the best known white man on Grand Cay. Jake has been there a number of times with Larry, and is pretty well known himself. The fishing was spectacular, the weather and the seas were great, and the food was phenomenal. The conch fritters are the best I've ever eaten, and they have a dish called cheesy lobster that's too good to believe. We caught plenty of grouper, snapper and triggerfish to bring back to the States, and we didn't run out of beer or booze. What more can you ask for?

We returned to the States and Clearwater on Monday. The next day Jake and I drove to Tallahassee. Jake took care of some last minute things, and on Wednesday we drove to Fannin County. A couple of days later Jake received his formal job offer from Lockheed-Martin, and we learned the Mike has a pass and will visit us this weekend. The garden is growing, and all is good in my world.

That’s probably the last of my traveling for the summer. I was away from the cabin for 10 days in a 15 day period leaving Meredith to handle the garden and the new dog. Now she will get to go to Orlando to visit friends and help Jake find a place to stay and get his new place set up.

Meanwhile, in Fannin County the big news is the election. The two important contested races are for county commission chairman and sheriff.

For commission chairman, I’m voting for the challenger, Stan Helton. I’ve met and talked with him. I think he’s more attuned to present day realities and will help bring Fannin County government into the modern age.

It’s not really a difficult choice. The incumbent commission chairman, Bill Simonds, is a disaster waiting to happen in my opinion. The most recent revelation is that the county’s insurer paid $660,000 to settle age discrimination claims by four county workers that Simonds fired when he first became chairman. I’ve seen the settlement documents, and it’s clear that the insurer paid full value to settle the cases to avoid the risk of taking them to trial. As I understand it, soon after Simonds fired the four workers, all of whom were over 50, he turned around and hired four younger workers. That’s a prima facie case of age discrimination—something any halfway competent county administrator should know.

That’s not Simonds’ first mistake. He’s made a lot of them, and I’ve pointed out some of them in the guest columns I write for one of the local weekly papers.

You would think that Simonds wouldn’t have a chance of getting re-elected but I’m not sure about the politics around here. The big local weekly paper, the News Observer, is nothing more than a shill for the county administration. I think the fact that local government gets to pick the newspaper to be used for legal advertisements has a lot to do with that. It’s a large and steady source of revenue for a rural weekly newspaper.

To give you an example of how slanted the News Observer can be, the headline of the first story the paper ran on the age discrimination settlement said the county was found “not guilty” of age discrimination. That’s misleading to say the least. My concern is that News Observer readers have no clue how bad Simonds really is though I have to say that many people I speak to realize that the News Observer slants its stories. Maybe I’m not giving Fannin County voters enough credit.

The race for Fannin County Sheriff is also interesting. It pits the incumbent, Dane Kirby, against long time Blue Ridge Police Chief, Johnny Searce. Searce’s family has been around here for a while and is well-known and generally well-liked as I understand it.

I’m voting for Kirby. I’m currently taking the Fannin County Sheriff’s Citizens Law Enforcement Academy class (CLEA), and from what I’ve seen, Kirby has introduced policies and procedures at the Sheriff’s department that comply with nationwide best practices for police departments. Having defended quite a few police cases, I think I know a little about the subject, and I’m very impressed with what I’ve learned about the department.

Since I am new to local politics, I don’t know whether competency and good stewardship is enough to get re-elected in Fannin County. It may be that family ties and loyalties are more important. One thing is for sure—all the candidates for all the offices have deep roots in the community. That's clearly a prerequisite if you're going to run for office in these parts. You’re not going to find any candidates that weren’t born and raised in the area. If you've got a last name like Lebowksy, Silverstein, Yacavone or Kunta Kinte, forget about it.

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

I've Been Busy

I know it’s been a month since I posted to this blog. There are a couple reasons for that.

One is a lack of inspiration. The original purpose of this blog was to document what it is like to retire to a rural North Georgia county after 37 years working as an attorney in crowded Pinellas County, Florida. I retired and moved to Fannin County in the fall of 2013. I’ve now lived here long enough that what was once unusual is now familiar. This is my new normal, and it’s the rest of the world that is strange and worthy of observation and comment.

The other reason I haven’t written in this blog is because I’ve been busier than hell with the organizations I’ve joined, the class I was taking, getting the garden prepared and planted, a camping trip with the men’s group from my church, a trip to Tallahassee to go fishing with my oldest son, writing columns for one of the local papers, playing bass for this little group I am in and a number of other things that have kept me hopping. If this keeps up I may have to retire from my retirement. Thankfully, it looks like things will start to slow down for the summer.

I’ve said before that one of the secrets of retirement is to stay busy and involved. I would like add a caveat to that: don’t get so busy that you can’t take time to smell the roses. I figure that if you’ve managed to navigate your way through life and work to reach retirement you’ve earned the right to do nothing every now and then.

As noted above, I recently went on the annual camping trip of the men’s group from my church. I am happy to report that I returned safely and in good health from the expedition.

Church group camping trips seem to be something of a tradition around here. Usually it’s the men or the youth groups who go on them. I don’t think the women do camping trips. At least that’s true for the church I go to. Our women go to places like Gatlinburg or Pigeon Forge where they stay in nice places, eat at nice restaurants and visit local attractions. The men, on the other hand, choose to live in tents, sit around a smoky campfire looking at trees, and eat their own cooking. And we think we’re the smarter sex. Ha!

I suppose the purpose of such trips is fellowship and an opportunity to commune with nature. In the case of my church, which is Episcopal or more properly Anglican, it’s also a chance to drink craft beer and good whiskey, eat cholesterol-laden foods, swap stories while sitting around the campfire and do the manly things that men do when they get together in the woods. It’s all very Neanderthal in a quasi-urbane sort of way.

The men’s group at my church is composed of, shall we say, mature individuals. That’s a nice way of saying that we’re old retired guys. It is an interesting group of men. All of them have done something meaningful and accomplished in their lives and have had an abundance of interesting life experiences. As a result, most of them are experienced and proficient bull shitters.

As a side note to the ladies, bull shitting is a predominantly male trait that consists of swapping stories, tales and experiences. It is generally done while consuming alcoholic beverages, and it is mostly truthful though an occasional dramatic embellishment or exaggeration is allowed and, indeed, encouraged. It can be entertaining for the listeners but it can also grow tedious particularly after long hours of it or when the stories start repeating because short term memory is beginning to go. I think it is considered a part of the male bonding ritual by those who study such things. I imagine our primitive ancestors did much the same thing while squatting around the campfire after a hunt.

While experiencing the wonders of nature was one of the objects of the trip, this was not by any means an exercise in primitive camping. This group does not believe in roughing it. There was no sleeping on rocks and foraging for wild foods ala Euell Gibbons. Foraging for the foie gras and premium bourbon is more this group’s style.

Most of the men brought a pickup truck full of gear and supplies to ensure that the outdoor experience was as comfortable as possible. After everyone had unpacked and set up camp, the campsite resembled a Bedouin encampment complete with huge tents, cots, collapsible tables and chairs, multiple coolers with refreshments and other creature comforts. It would not surprise me if a couple of the larger tents had sofas and Persian rugs in them. All that was missing were palm trees, camels and a few pink flamingos in front of the tents.

The campground was located at the end of a long and winding road somewhere in North Carolina in the Nantahala National Forest. There was absolutely no cell phone reception. To get cell phone reception you had to leave the park, drive a mile down the road to a volunteer fire station and stand on the southwest corner of the porch facing north in a crouched position. At least I think those were the instructions.

For what it’s worth, "Nantahala" is a Cherokee word meaning "Land of the Noonday Sun." I have no idea why.

There was a concern the first few nights that bears and raccoons would get into our food so everyone was careful to put their coolers in their vehicles. After the first night I realized there was little chance predatory wildlife would venture anywhere near the camp. The grunts, moans, groans, snores, farts and other unearthly noises that emanated from a dozen mature men sleeping was frightening. A bear or a raccoon would have to possess a large pair of balls to invade that campsite.

The camping trip lasted from Tuesday to Friday. Four days is about the limit. By then all the stories had been told and retold, the food had been consumed, the alcohol was running low and we were getting tired of trekking up the hill to the bathroom to pee at night. The tents and camping gear were disassembled and packed away in our vehicles, and our caravan rolled out wagon train-style back to civilization, our own beds and convenient bathrooms.

A good time was had by all, fellowship had been reestablished and bonding had occurred. Boy, am I glad it only happens once a year.