I am in the habit of watching the national news in the evening. It’s one of the things you have the leisure to do when you’re retired. It’s probably a mistake because all it does is make me angry and increasingly pessimistic about the future of our country, our world and mankind in general. I’m cantankerous enough as it is; I certainly don’t need the national news poking me in the ass on a daily basis.
When I watch the news I often feel like I’m one of those underwater explorers looking out the small window of a bathyscaphe at alien undersea life. The United States that is revealed on the nightly news seems so different from the world that I live in here in rural Southern Appalachia. This may be naïve, but I feel like I live in an island of sanity in a world that has gone crazy.
Let’s take one example. The news is filled with accounts of young men and women in this country being radicalized by Islamic extremism to the point of going to join ISIS or commit homegrown acts of terror in the name of Allah and his Prophet. It is inconceivable to me that a young person’s lot in life could be so bad he or she would believe that joining ISIS represents a better future. I cannot fathom why anyone born in the United States would want to live under an ideology that condones and encourages the barbaric acts that the Islamic State commits: forcing women into sexual slavery, killing children, destroying priceless historic sites and burning, drowning and beheading fellow humans.
I don’t care how grim your situation is in our country, there is no way that any sane person can possibly believe that life in an ISIS-controlled state would be better on any level. I guess the key word in that statement is “sane,” and I’m compelled to conclude that radicalized homegrown terrorists are not rational human beings.
That’s just one example of why I get the feeling that the country that I see every night on the news has gone crazy. There are others:
- A system that tolerates a Congress that exempts itself from the laws and regulations it imposes on the citizenry while voting themselves excessive benefits and privileges;
- Politicians apologizing for saying that all lives matter;
- Men and women in the military having to resort to food stamps and other public welfare to support themselves and their families because their pay is so low;
- A VA system that treats veterans like second class citizens;
- A Federal bureaucracy that has lost the ability to discipline its employees for gross misconduct and misfeasance.
Here’s another, smaller example. I read the other day that the United States Department of Agriculture has mounted a campaign to get producers to stop referring to small raisins as midget raisins because the word “midget” is offensive. If you don’t believe me, check out this website.
My first reaction was: Are you shitting me!? First of all, I didn’t know there were such things as midget raisins, and I’m willing to bet that nine-tenths of the American public didn’t either. So if the term is offensive it’s certainly not being bandied about. Second, I question whether most people hearing the term would be truly offended. I certainly didn’t think of small people when I read the term. It’s not like they are called dago raisins or kike raisins or short bus raisins. Regardless of whether a few people subjectively feel that the term “midget raisins” is in some way a slight on their stature, it strikes me as being utterly crazy that taxpayer dollars are being used for such foolishness. Maybe it’s time to bring back Randy Newman’s song about short people.
I could go on and on. (There are a lot of things that piss me off. I might be one of the most pissed off people in the world. It's one of my endearing personality traits.) Note that I have intentionally avoided any examples that smack of politics or political ideology because your yin could be my yang, but I think you get my point. There is so much happening in this country that defies common sense, logic, or explanation.
As I said above, I have this strong sense that I live in an island of sanity in a world that has gone crazy, and it is a great comfort to me to feel like that. I know that many of you will conclude that I’m crazy in believing that. And I freely acknowledge that my feelings in this regard are not very rational and are based in large part on my overly emotional and romantic view of rural small town life.
But that doesn’t matter. In this case perception is more important than reality, at least when it comes to my state of mind. There is such a state of grace as being fat, dumb and happy. What’s important in that phrase is being dumb enough to fail to realize that you shouldn’t be fat or happy.
So I guess the point of this post is that I’m okay with being fat, dumb and happy about living in a rural county near a small town in Southern Appalachia regardless of whether my perceptions are irrational or not.
Maybe the solution to my problem is to stop watching the nightly news. But that would require me to do an “ostrich with its head in the sand” analysis, and that sounds like a lot of mental effort. Screw it—I’m going out to play in the garden.
Believe it or not, the first signs of fall have come to Fannin County. The leaves on the Sassafras and Sourwood trees have started to turn. Acorns are falling in droves out of the oak trees. Already there are a few scattered fallen leaves cluttering our yard. I even saw a wooly caterpillar the other day. Sure signs that the seasons are changing, and summer is waning.
The wooly caterpillar was all reddish-brown with no black line in the middle. I don’t remember whether that’s a sign it will be a cold winter or a mild winter. I do know that the telltale signs of summer’s passing are early this year. The Old Farmer’s Almanac says it will be a cold and wet winter. More significantly, perhaps, weather scientists are predicting that winter in the American southeast could be unusually cold and wet based on an exceptionally large El Nino in the Pacific. A cold and wet winter in these parts likely means more snow than usual.
I feel ambivalent about the prospect of winter, particularly a cold and wet one. On the one hand, winter means I get a break from tending to the garden and mowing the yard and the fields. On the other hand, it means many days of being forced to stay indoors because of the cold and the lack of things to do outside. I hate being forced indoors and being bored. I need to make sure I have plenty of indoor activities to keep me busy. Maybe this will be the winter that I start the novel that I’ve been wanting to write for the last 40 years.
One of the things I intend to do this winter is to learn how to play the dulcimer, and to that end I am taking a beginning dulcimer class. I know what you are thinking. The dulcimer for God’s sake! Real men don’t play the dulcimer! Have I become a sensitive, namby-pamby, tofu-eating, tree-hugging, tie dye shirt-wearing, folksong-singing wimp?
I acknowledge that the dulcimer is not exactly a hard-rocking, balls-to-the-wall instrument. You’re not going to be playing ZZ Top, AC/DC or Jason Aldean music on it. The first thing I think of when I hear the word “dulcimer” is some frail, long-haired, trembly-voiced, sandal-wearing, pale-skinned young woman plaintively singing 17th century folksongs with phrases like “fare thee well” and “hither and yon.”
All that may be true, but the dulcimer has a few things to commend itself to my attention. First of all, it is one of the few musical instruments that originated in the United States. Moreover, it originated in the Appalachian Mountains which means that it lends itself to playing bluegrass and other types of music that are popular in these parts.
Second, it is a chording instrument, meaning you can play chords on it. A chord is composed of two or more notes played simultaneously. I’ve played the bass guitar for 30 years. You play the bass guitar one string at a time. It is not, therefore, a chording instrument. That’s the main reason you don’t find people sitting around the campfire singing along to someone playing the bass guitar. (Not that I particularly want to sit around the campfire playing my dulcimer and singing Kumbaya with a group of people.)
Finally, it is a simple instrument. The classic mountain dulcimer has four strings. The top two strings are the same gauge and tuned the same. Around here most folks eliminate one of the top two strings which means you only have three strings to fool around with. Three strings. That’s one step up in complexity from rhythm sticks, a tub bass or the tambourine. The strings are far apart (that’s important when you’re used to playing the bass guitar). The chords do not require you to wrap your fingers around each other like on a guitar. In other words, the dulcimer is made for musical idiots which is why it’s so good for me.
So I attended my first class last week. I walked in the room and discovered the woman who teaches the class and six older women all of whom looked like they could have played Mrs. Doubtfire. When I stepped into the room all six of them looked up at me with pleasant little smiles on their faces. I could hear their thoughts. "Oh look. There's a man in the class. How nice." I half expected one of them to offer me a crumpet.
I’m not a particularly big man, but I am 6’ 1” and 240 pounds so I occupy some space. My size 13 cowboy boots should have warning flags on the ends so people do not trip over them. My usual public face has been described as a cross between a glare and a scowl. It’s fair to say that I was the odd monkey in the room. If the scenario was used as a simple I.Q. test to see if kindergarten kids could pick out what was wrong with this picture, I was the correct answer.
After introductions, the class started. It seems to be my lot in life that every time I take a class like this it is taught by a former grade school teacher. This class was no exception. Maybe I’m just a cantankerous old fart, but I hate being told the obvious. I like to cut ahead to the meat of the issue or presentation. But I guess old habits die hard, and when you’ve been teaching second graders for 40 years, you just can’t help yourself. So I had to sit through a lot of verbiage telling me the obvious before we got down to brass tacks. Of course, all these snide comments kept floating through my mind while she was speaking. It went a little like this:
Hello, I’m your teacher. (No shit! That’s probably why you’re sitting at the front of the class facing us.)
This is a dulcimer. (Thank God. I was afraid this thing I brought to the class may have been a bowling ball.)
These are the strings. (What an idiot. I thought they were shish kebob skewers.)
There are four of them. (Whew! At least I passed the math test.)
These holes on the top are where the sound comes out. (What a relief. I was afraid it would be emailed to me.)
Here’s how you strum the dulcimer. You strum this way, and then you strum back. (Ah. I was worried that there might be multidimensional strumming.)
And so it went. The first class is in the bag. I know how to place the dulcimer on my lap (on both thighs obviously), tune and strum the instrument. I’m ready to move on to bigger and better things. Maybe next week we’ll actually learn some notes. It won’t be long before we’re ready to hit the road to entertain people with popular dulcimer favorites like…err…whatever. I think we’ll bill ourselves as Grumpy and the Doubtfire Sextet.
I apologize for the delay in posting this new post but I have a good excuse. Meredith and I were in Camp Lejeune, N.C., over the weekend visiting our youngest son, Mike. He is in the Marines, and he graduated from the School of Infantry (SOI) last week. We went for the graduation and ended up helping him transfer to his first assignment “in the fleet.” That’s Marine jargon for doing actual duties as a full-fledged Marine as opposed to training to become a Marine. He has been assigned to the 2d Light Armored Reconnaissance (LAR) Battalion.
The Marines made him an 81 mm mortarman which means, obviously, that his job is to fire the 81 mm mortar. In the 2d LAR the mortar is carried around in an eight-wheeled light armored vehicle called (as you can probably guess by now) an LAV.
Mike is happy with his assignment for several reasons. First, he does not have to carry the 81 mm mortar which is a one heavy son of a bitch. Second, he gets to ride rather than walk. Third, even though he has an infantry MOS (military occupational specialty), his job does not, in his words, involve breaking down doors to enter buildings which may be filled with bad guys. Instead, his job is to blow up the buildings containing the bad guys and thereby save everyone time, effort and danger. His mother and I like that, and I agree totally with the concept. Why use rifles when heavy artillery or a B52 carpet bombing will do the job? My philosophy is that in war and litigation, there is no such thing as overkill.
Our chance to spend a few days with Mike fits in nicely with the theme of this post—family. It should be obvious to anyone reading this blog that I love living in a rural area and believe that the world would be a better place if everyone lived in a small town. I’ve been giving a lot of thought to what makes rural, small town life so different from life in the city or crowded suburbia, and I’ve concluded that it’s due to many factors.
I’m aware that I’m basing my conclusions on limited data. I grew up as an Army brat moving from one Army base to another. I attended college at a small liberal arts school in Pennsylvania and graduate school and law school at the University of Florida. Clearly, none of that exposed me in any meaningful way to life in the country or in the city or suburbia. Thus, all I have to go on in comparing urban/suburban life with country/small town life is 37 years living in crowded Pinellas County, Florida, and the last two years living in Fannin County in rural southern Appalachia. Even so, my gut tells me that that my experiences and observations here probably hold true for most rural areas and small towns.
One thing I’ve noticed is that family is very important to people around here. I’m not talking simply about parents and children; I’m talking about extended family—grandparents, cousins, second cousins, nephews and nieces. Sometimes I get the impression that everyone around here is related to everyone else either by blood or marriage. It also seems like all or most of this extended family has not strayed too far from the roost; they all seem to live in or near Fannin County.
The other thing I’ve noticed is that people around here tend to have deep family roots in the sense that they know their genealogy, who their grandparents and great grandparents were, and who their extend kin and distant relations are. One gets the impression that their family roots are important to them. It is not uncommon to see a notice in the local paper that a family is having a “homecoming.” This is where extended family members—old and young alike—gather for the weekend. In many cases this involves a visit to spruce up the old family cemetery. When I first read about homecomings I was reminded of the practice of ancestor worship which prevails in some Asian cultures.
By contrast, my sense is that extended family ties and family roots are less important to folks in urban areas. For one thing, I suspect that urban families are more likely to be dispersed with family members living in different cities and states.
I believe that the strong stress on family is one of the reasons that living in a rural area with a small town feels different than living in a highly populated place. There is a greater sense of connectedness, community and shared values. The people seem more grounded and rooted. There is less division and more consensus. Because they are comfortable with who and where they are they have less compulsion to separate themselves from the maddening masses through bizarre dress, different lifestyles and aberrant behavior. We all have seen the email pictures of weirdly stressed wackos in Walmart. I guarantee you will not see anything like that in a rural Walmart.
I know I sound like a limp-wristed, corduroy jacket-wearing, liberal sociology professor, but I really would like to figure out what it is that makes me perceive that there is a difference between country folk and city folk. For one thing, I’d like to know whether there is any objective basis for feeling the way I do or whether I’m full of beans and engaging in a giant romantic fantasy.
But do not fear. I promise that I will not go soft and academic on you. As tangible proof of that, I am trying to find out whether it is possible to buy a working 81 mm mortar on the black market. You see, I have this deer and mole problem in my garden that I would like to take care of…
Will Rogers once said, “I never met a man I didn’t like.” Actually, he said it quite a bit. It was his slogan, much like Avis’s slogan is “We try harder.” I have great respect for Will Rogers. If you’ve never read any of the many newspaper columns he wrote, you need to do so. He ranks up there with Mark Twain for his humor and effective idiomatic use of the English language. Like Mark Twain, he was not a simple kid from the country, but rather a skilled, funny and insightful wordsmith who knew his audience.
He said some clever things like:
There
are three kinds of men. The one that learns by reading. The few that learn by
observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves.
Always drink upstream from the herd.
When I die, I want to die like my grandfather who died peacefully in his sleep. Not screaming like all the passengers in his car.
As loved and respected as Will Rogers was by the public, it is pure bullshit that he never met a man he didn’t like. I say that for two reasons. First, it is inevitable human nature to divide the world into likes and dislikes, good and bad. That’s the way the brain works. It has to categorize and stereotype in order to avoid being overwhelmed by the almost infinite variety of situations and sensory inputs a person encounters on a daily basis. The brain simply cannot process, analyze and make value judgments of that much information otherwise.
Second, and perhaps more importantly, there are enough jerks, buttheads and A-holes out there that it’s mathematically impossible to go through life without bumping into your fair share of them. I’ve never met anyone who likes jerks, buttheads and A-holes so I’d bet the farm that Will Rogers met a lot of people he didn’t like. He was smart enough to say otherwise to foster his image and further his career.
I don’t have that problem. I don’t have to worry about a career anymore, and I have no image to preserve. I have discovered that life gets a lot easier when you really don’t care what people think of you. So I don’t mind confessing that I’ve met plenty of people that I don’t like. I may even be proud of that fact.
Truth be told, I don’t think I can go through a day without not liking someone. I certainly cannot go through a half hour newscast without discovering there is another politician, commentator or celebrity that I don’t like. And every day the dislike list grows longer. By now it includes most of Congress, everyone who has hosted a show on MSNBC, most of the names on the Hollywood A list, virtually the entire state of California and everyone who works for the satellite internet service that provides such poor service to me. I’ve never really taken a tally, but I venture to say that I dislike more people than I like.
Which brings me to my topic and that is how nice and polite people are here in Fannin County and how hard it is to find people I really dislike. I’m not just saying that. It’s true. Virtually everyone I’ve met in the almost two years I’ve lived here has been nice, polite, welcoming and friendly. At first, it was disconcerting and a little overwhelming but now I’ve grown accustomed to it. I’ve even started trying to be nice myself. I make a point of smiling at least once a week. It’s a work in progress.
Since I am unable to accept anything on face value, I’ve spent considerable time trying to figure out why there are so many nice and likable people here and why it’s so hard to dislike them. I’ve concluded that it has a lot to do with the innate nature of rural areas and a small towns.
There are less than 25,000 people in Fannin County. As a consequence, you do not have the anonymity that you have in a more populous area, and there is a greater feeling of community. The circles are smaller. Everyone knows everyone else. Sometimes it feels like they are all related to each other. Instead of six degrees of separation there are probably only two or three. If there is any truth to the saying “what goes about comes about,” what goes about is more likely to come about a lot quicker here than in a highly populated area.
All of which means that people try to get along a little more here than in big cities and crowded suburbia. My analogy is this. If you’re on a big cruise ship you’re less likely to accommodate and accept the perceived flaws, foibles and weaknesses of others than you would be if you were together on a life raft with six other people.
I may be going out on a limb here, but I suspect that being nice, polite, welcoming and friendly are qualities that are common to most rural areas and small towns in this country. You always hear about people from big cities coming back from a visit to the Midwest and commenting that people there are so nice and friendly. By and large the Midwest is a place of small towns and rural communities. That may account for why they are perceived as being nice and friendly.
Regardless, if you are naturally abrasive, obnoxious and rude you should think twice about moving to a small town or a rural area. The odds are that you will not fit in.
By now you are probably wondering how I’ve made it through two years without being banned, shunned, tarred or feathered since I’m no Will Rogers. To tell the truth, that’s actually kind of a mystery to me. It either proves that people really are nice, polite and friendly around here or it demonstrates an amazing lack of perception. Either way, I’ll take it.
As much as I like living in rural North Georgia, I have to concede that there are certain things about living in a more populated area that I miss. Doing without these things may be the price you pay for living in the country.
If you like ethnic food, Fannin County is not the place to be. Aside from a few Italian and Mexican places, there are not a lot of small, convenient ethnic restaurants around here. You have to travel to another county to get Chinese, Cuban or Thai food. As for Greek food, forget about it. I don’t think there is a Greek restaurant north of Atlanta.
The absence of local ethnic restaurants is somewhat of a mystery to me given the number of tourists who visit Fannin County and the number of people from Atlanta, Florida and other points south who have moved here or have second homes here. Surely they bring their appetite for something other than barbeque, southern home cooking and country buffet food with them when they come.
While we’re on the subject of food, the concept of fast food seems to have escaped the owners, operators and employees of many of Fannin County’s fast food restaurants. There is a Taco Bell in town that may well be living proof that there are alternate universes where time moves at a different pace. The McDonald’s in Blue Ridge is not going to set any records for fast service.
I speculate that the slowness of local fast food restaurants may be related to the concept of Georgia time where things are done in their own due time. It took Meredith and me a little while to understand that when a repairman or delivery person says he’ll be out tomorrow, that’s to be taken as a general indication that you’re on his list and not as a promise that he’ll actually arrive in the morrow. It really means that he’ll get to you some time in the next few days.
Looking on the positive side, if you’re seeking a slow-paced, unhurried existence or want to test whether you have learned patience in retirement all you have to do is order a meal at a local fast food restaurant. While a slow-paced, unhurried lifestyle was one of the many reasons I moved here, it’s become apparent that I need to work on the patience thing. Not unreasonably, I want my morning cup of coffee at McDonald’s now while it’s still morning.
I miss having a convenient Barnes & Noble or Book-A-Million store to go to. While I can always order books online, nothing beats wandering through a book store and perusing titles. I’ve stumbled across so many interesting books and subjects that way. Unfortunately, the nearest Barnes & Noble bookstore is in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
Speaking of entertainment, it would be great if there was a movie theater in Fannin County. The only way to see first run movies around here is to drive to the next county or go to the local drive-in movie theater. I’m told the Star Drive-in is a great place, and I know that it shows first run feature films (as opposed to the second rate B-movie horror flics that are standard drive-in movie fare).
The problem is that I used to go to drive-in movie theaters when I lived in Kentucky many years ago, and as I remember it, the last thing one does at a drive-in is watch the movie. What I remember about the experience is a lot of back seat grappling with dates, sneaking around and sticking potatoes up tailpipes, drinking beer and shooting the shit with friends. I don’t think I can really get into a movie at a drive-in, and I’m too old and arthritic to be grappling with Meredith in the back seat of a car.
We could use some more radio stations around here. I listen to the radio as I drive around. Unfortunately the station choices are limited. There are about a dozen religious stations, several country stations, and two Latino stations to choose from.
For the most part, the religious stations are hell fire and brimstone Baptist stations and not what I consider entertainment. The country stations are okay, but the selections get repetitious after a while. What’s odd about the Latino stations is that they come in loud and strong as if they were broadcasting with a lot of power or located nearby. As far as I can tell, there are not a lot of Latinos in this area or at least not enough to justify having a powerful Latino radio station. There’s nothing wrong with Latino music, but a little marimba music goes a long way if you know what I mean. We could really use a good classic rock station, a good 24-hour news channel, and a good talk radio station, but I’m not going to hold my breath.
I guess the lesson to be learned here is that there are trade-offs in life. You can’t have it all, and on the whole, I’d rather live in rural Fannin County without having a lot of ethnic restaurant choices, prompt fast food restaurants, a big bookstore, an indoor movie theater and better radio stations than live in a more populated area where all those things exist. That’s not to say that I wouldn’t kill for a good gyro or a plate of pad thai right now.
I recently wrote about the perils of picking vegetables from my garden. I discovered another one yesterday. It was early in the morning, and I was out in the garden picking beans. I stepped on something. It took a second for it to register that whatever was under my foot was soft and squishy. I looked down and saw that I had placed my foot on a big ass snake. When I say big ass snake, I mean it. That may be the scientific name for the snake I stepped on. It was at least four feet long.
I immediately set the world record for the backwards hop, skip and jump while wearing large rubber boots and squealing like a little girl. Actually, that’s a bit of artistic license on my part. I did not squeal like a little girl. I believe my exact words were “holy shit” as I backpedaled like a mofo in the general direction of the okra.
Once I was over my surprise I realized it was not a poisonous snake. If had to guess, and it is a guess, I’d say it was some type of black snake. That stunning analysis is based on the fact it was a snake and it was black. Even though I’m not sure what type of snake it was, I think it’s a good thing to have a snake like that hanging around a garden because it probably eats field mice and voles, both of which nibble on plants. I’d be happy to have resident snake that ate moles, but I would probably draw the line on one large enough to eat a groundhog. One thing’s for damn sure—I’m not going to be reaching blindly under the squash and pumpkin leaves any time soon.
Turning to another subject, some people around here have not taken kindly to the recent controversy over the display of the Confederate battle flag. Lately I’ve seen a lot of pickup trucks driving around with large versions of the Stars and Bars or the old Georgia State Flag waving from the back bed.
I suspect that some of the flags I’ve seen were purchased from roadside souvenir stands. A couple of the flags had the face of Hank Williams Jr. superimposed on the Stars and Bars, at least one had the face Robert E. Lee on it and one may have had the face of P.T. Beauregard. It was either P.T. Beauregard or Colonel Sanders—they’re easy to confuse. (As an aside, the new Colonel Sanders in the K.F.C. commercials is the creepiest corporate spokesman I’ve ever seen. He looks more like an aging pedophile than a genuine Kentucky Colonel. I bet his secret ingredients include a raincoat and a piece of candy. Whose idea was it to have your corporate rep dress up like a member of the slave owning aristocracy in the anti-bellum south? I bet that will increase K.F.C.’s market share in black neighborhoods. As my kids were fond of saying when they were young: smooth move, Ex-Lax.)
Liberal Eastern Establishment metrosexuals, Hollywood liberals, “progressive” Ivy League professors and everyone who ever voted for Debbie Wasserman Schultz are quick to label people who ride around with the Confederate battle flag as ignorant rubes, rednecks and racists. They undoubtedly agree with Obama’s arrogant and dismissive assertion that country folk continue to cling to their guns and religion. I’d like to invite them to Fannin County so they can kiss my ass.
My observation is that most of the people displaying the Confederate battle flag on the back of their battered pickups are men. My guess is that most of them do not have college degrees, have lived in North Georgia all their life and have blue collar jobs.
But they are not rubes and they are not ignorant; they simply have a completely different skill set than you are likely to find among similar aged males in metropolitan areas. Collectively they know how to fish and hunt, fix a small engine, shingle a roof, fix a leaky toilet, dress and butcher a deer, makes sausage and so many other things that so-called sophisticated and educated city-types are unable to do. They may not know the difference between Chardonnay and Beaujolais or whether narrow ties are in or out this year, but they can discuss the finer points of good barbeque and know the difference between a Caroline-rigged plastic worm and a Texas-rigged one.
And yes, they do believe strongly in God and guns, and as far as I’m concerned there’s nothing wrong with that. They also believe in country. These are the people who fight our wars by making up a disproportionate part of our military. And I’ll tell you this with all sincerity: if I was going to go into harm’s way with my ass on the line, I’d rather have them standing behind me and protecting my flanks than all the namby-pamby metrosexuals in the Northeast.
I understand how the flag can represent slavery and racism to some people. I also understand how the flag can represent history and heritage to others. More than anything, I suspect that the recent proliferation of Confederate flags in this area is not motivated out of racism or a desire for white supremacy as much as it’s a protest by a proud people against smothering political correctness. It’s beginning to feel like the thought police have taken over American society and are intent on dictating every aspect of how you think, speak, act and view and interpret history.
I don’t know. I’m probably in over my head here, and all this deep thinking and analysis is starting to give me a headache. It’s time to grab a beer, munch on a Slim Jim and watch a rerun of Hee Haw. I guess that will tell you where my sympathies lie.
I am learning that a large garden in the country is an open invitation for a variety of critters and creatures to come and feast. Hungry beasties flock to it like college kids flock to half price night at an all-you-can-eat buffet.
So far I’ve had to contend with deer and moles attacking the garden, not to mention a variety of ravenous insects. Now the garden is being stalked by a groundhog. I’m beginning to feel that the circle of life that Walt Disney made a central theme of the movie “The Lion King” is really a maneuver by nature to get behind my back and bite me on the ass.
If you’re not already aware, a groundhog looks like a small beaver without a flat tail. Up north they’re called woodchucks. According to Wikipedia, they’re also called whistlepigs in some places. They’re plentiful in North Georgia, and I see them all the time as I drive around Fannin County.
To use a phrase that we seem to be hearing a lot these days, a groundhog is an existential threat to a garden. (There has been debate in the news media lately about whether ISIS is an “existential” threat to this country. When I first heard the term I had no idea what it meant. The first thing that flashed in my mind was that the United States was under attack from Islamic terrorists quoting Kierkegaard and Sartre. How dangerous can that be? To my knowledge, no one has ever been killed by a philosophy bomb. Then I did some research and learned that an existential threat is a threat to something’s survival.)
I’ve seen the damage that a groundhog can do. The Feed Fannin group that I belong to has a large garden where it grows vegetables to donate to the local food pantry. Just one groundhog wiped out the garden’s entire crop of cabbage in a matter of a few weeks this summer. The way I see it, that the groundhog took food from the mouths of hungry families with babies and small children. Think about that the next time you see a PETA commercial or feel a twinge of sympathy for a furry woodland creature. In fact, that’s going to be my rallying cry in the battle with Mr. Groundhog: Remember the Cabbages! It doesn’t quite have the same ring as Remember the Maine or Remember the Alamo but it’s the best I can do on short notice.
I am not a live and let live type of guy, and I’m not about to let a groundhog get at my garden. It’s time to circle the wagons, man the barricades, fight the good fight, put on my big boy pants and all other clichés that slip my mind right now.
I spent two days last week zeroing in my .22 rifles and stashing them at convenient locations in the cabin so I can grab them when Mr. Groundhog is spotted. Some of you may think it’s a little odd having a rifle leaning beside every exterior door to my house, but it’s not like we have a lot of next door neighbors dropping by unexpectedly to borrow a cup of sugar. Besides, I kind of like the look. I thinking of calling it Early American Survivalist or maybe Ruby Ridge Revival. And there’s nothing like the smell of Hoppe’s No. 9 as you’re drinking your morning coffee.
I’ll say this for Mr. Groundhog—he’s not like a lousy mole that burrows underground. Mr. Groundhog stays above ground. He sneaks from the wood line at dawn and dusk and crawls through the field towards the garden. He’s crafty and alert and scurries back to the protection of the woods if he detects danger or unusual movement. It will not be easy to take him out. I figure that makes it a fair fight, mano y mano, or maybe that should be mano y varmito.
Not that I believe in fighting fair. To paraphrase Barry Goldwater, extremism in defense of vegetables is no vice. I’ve cleared fields of fire by mowing the grass in the field surrounding my garden to deprive the groundhog of cover if he tries to sneak into the garden. If they were available to the general public I’d be tempted to buy trip mines and Predator drones.
Meredith or I are on heightened alert. We have gotten in the habit of getting up and looking out the front and side windows every few minutes hoping to spot the groundhog creeping towards the garden. To be honest, the constant up and down and peering out the windows is getting to be a pain in the ass. We look like a family of meerkats with all that bobbing up and down, and our little dog is starting to get paranoid that there might be something dangerous outside.
The way things have gone this summer makes me wonder what nature will throw at me next. A hoard of rabbits or a plague of locusts can’t be too far off. Hell, at this point I wouldn’t be surprised if a herd of buffalo came over the hill. But I’m not going to complain too loudly. I moved here for that authentic rural experience, and I’d say that I’m getting it.
