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.

A Letter From Yacavone Land

This post is more in the nature of a letter home from Camp Grenada. That’s a Stan Freberg reference for those of you too young to remember (which is probably three-fourths of the planet at this point). Consider this a family album post.

There is a possibility that my youngest son, Michael, who is in the Marines, will be stationed in Bulgaria. Meredith found this out on a website devoted to potential Marine deployments.

To be honest, I thought Bulgaria was a stomach condition caused by eating too much starchy food so when I heard that Michael might be deployed there I was a bit confused. Then it was explained to me that Bulgaria is located on the west side of the Black Sea. It is north of Turkey, south of Romania, east of Serbia and Macedonia and near the Ukraine. I only have a vague idea of where those places are but it was enough information to let me know that Bulgaria is not a disease—though it sure sounds like a good place to get one.

I know absolutely nothing about Bulgaria, and I’m sure that I’m not the only one. No offense to Bulgarians but I bet 90 percent of all people surveyed would say that all the following statements are true:

1. Bulgaria is populated by short hairy women who resemble potatoes.
2. The Bulgarian diet consists mainly of turnips and onions.
3. The Bulgarian national flower is the liverwort.
4. The most popular men’s cologne in Bulgaria is made from garlic.
5. The most popular sport in Bulgaria is chasing goats.

So I looked on the internet to see what I could find out about Bulgaria. As it turns out, Bulgaria doesn’t sound like that bad a place to visit—the women are attractive (just google “Bulgarian Women” to find out), the food is like Greek food (which I love), the national flower is the rose and the most popular sport in Bulgaria is soccer. The word is still out on the garlic cologne.

Much to my surprise, Bulgaria is a member of NATO. According to Meredith’s information the Marines are going there to conduct joint training exercises with the Bulgarian military and to show Putin that the U.S. can’t be pushed around. I think it’s a little late for that but what do I know? If Michael is deployed there I’ll ask him to look for one of the famous Obama red lines. He’ll probably have a hard time finding it. I hear it’s thin and easily crossed with no repercussions.

On the whole, Bulgaria doesn’t sound like a terrible place for Michael to be deployed. There are certainly worse places. If he does get stationed there Meredith and I will likely go and visit him. I’m interested in seeing what Bulgaria is like, and I’d like to pick up a couple of t-shirts that say University of Bulgaria on them just to confuse the hell out of people. 

Incidentally, the photo above depicts a traditional Bulgarian folk dance in traditional Bulgarian costumes. I assume the dancers are traditional Bulgarians. I guess it's the Bulgarian equivalent of Riverdance. 

Autumn has come to North Georgia. The air is crisp and cool in the morning. There have been a couple of frosts. The trees are starting to turn colors, and fallen leaves are starting to litter the lawn. Falling acorns are doing a steady tattoo on the metal roof of the woodshed, and the squirrels are busy storing nuts and acorns for winter. There are dry corn stalks in farmers’ fields. The turkey chicks I saw last spring are almost fully grown. Br’er Rabbit is running through the pasture. Let me know if I’m beginning to sound like Uncle Remus.

The fall garden is winding down. There are sweet potatoes and regular potatoes still in the ground. I have to dig up them up one of these days when I get motivated. We still have leeks, Swiss chard, kale, collards and cabbage to pick. They’ll last until the first hard frost which could be anywhere from a week to a month and a half away.

If you have been following this blog, you know that I’ve had groundhog problems in my garden and bought a couple of traps to try to catch the sneaky little bugger. In the interest of full disclosure, I want to give you the score so far: Possums 3, Rabbits 2, Groundhogs 0. Obviously I’m not having a great deal of success catching groundhogs, but I’m hell on the possum and rabbit population.

We have a new dog. He wandered up to me while I was raking hay in the lower field, and we adopted him. At Mike’s suggestion we named him Recon. I have a problem remembering names so he also answers to Rocky, Rocket, Rocko, Ricola and Retard. I sure hope that dogs cannot have identity crises.

The vet says that Recon is a border collie/terrier mix. I know nothing about dogs but I’m told that terriers are smart and that border collies like to herd animals. I’m sure those traits will come in useful when I become a doddering old fool wandering around aimlessly. Meredith can simply tell Recon to herd me in for supper, and then Recon can help me do the crossword after dinner. Recon has already caught and eaten a field mouse which makes him okay in my book. I’ve started showing him photos of rabbits and groundhogs smothered in gravy.

I’ve starting writing a biweekly column for a local newspaper. I will use it to highlight all the foils, foibles, tribulations and shortcomings of local government with an occasional rant and rave about national politics.

It’s no secret that I am on the conservative side of the political spectrum so I’ll probably toss in an insulting polemic against liberals and progressives when the mood strikes me. I imagine that some of these columns will arouse the ire of Fannin County Democrats. There are not a lot of them. According to voting records only about 20 percent of the county is registered Democrat. Even so, there is an active and vocal Democrat Party in Fannin County which I think is rather courageous given how conservative this area is.

I’m not too worried about suffering any retaliation from the local Dems. Most of the ones I’ve met in this area are of the tofu-eating, Prius-driving, Birkenstock-wearing variety—not exactly the crowd to strike fear in your heart if you know what I mean.

Well, that’s it from Yacavone Land. Until next week.

The Times They Are A'Changing

Not too long after I moved to Fannin County I was told by several people that the county was run by long-time resident good old boys who are resistant to change and suspicious of newcomers and new ideas, even ones that might allow local government to run more economically or efficiently or transparently. I was told that they prefer to do things the way they have always been done. It was even suggested to me that life could get unpleasant for any newcomer who was critical of local government and tried to rock the boat too much. I suspect that I’m not the only new resident of Fannin County to hear that.

I’m skeptical that a newcomer is under any genuine threat for criticizing the local establishment or suggesting new or better ways of doing things. This isn’t the Mafia we’re dealing with. I don’t think anyone is going to wake up with a severed horse’s head beside them in bed. A possum or squirrel maybe, but not a horse’s head.

However, it doesn’t surprise me that there are good old boys in Fannin County who are hesitant to embrace new and different ways of doing things. Any time there is an influx of new blood to an area, particularly an area that is rural and somewhat isolated, it is inevitable that some of those who have been there for a long time will be cool to the ideas of the newcomers for fear that the newcomers are trying to change their way of life.

I saw the same thing in Florida. There were bumper stickers saying that if you think things were so great up north why don’t you move back there. If you can have that attitude in a state that is mostly populated by newcomers, it’s not surprising to run into it here where the major influx of new residents has only occurred in the last ten to twenty years, and old timers significantly outnumber newcomers.

Thus, I don’t doubt that some of the good old boys around here feel threatened by newcomers with new ideas. What I cannot assess is whether that attitude is so pervasive and strongly held that it is a waste of time for newcomers to even try. I’ve been poking and prodding at the edges of local government since I’ve been here, and all I’ve seen is the usual resistance of local government to change. So far no one has tried to stone me for heresy or paint a big scarlet letter on my chest or ride me out of town on a rail. (And I have to think that if anyone can produce that sort of reaction it’s probably me. What I lack in tact I make up for in obnoxiousness.)

When you think about it, it’s really stupid for the good old boys to be resistant to new ideas.

For one thing, it’s for damn sure that their ancestors were not that stupid when they decided to uproot themselves to move to Northwest Georgia beginning in the 1840s. They saw the benefit of embracing change and breaking with the past in order to find new beginnings and new opportunities in a new land. Once they got here (not an easy feat in the 1840s), they didn’t become hidebound reactionaries who turned a deaf ear to new ideas and innovation. They built schools to educate their children and roads to enhance commerce. They sought out new and better ways to grow crops, market their products and improve their standard of living. They looked to the future and did not wallow in the past. If the ancestors of the current good old boys were not afraid of change, why should their descendants be?

The good old boys should consider why newcomers move here. Most of the newbies to this area come from urban areas, and they come to get away from the problems and hassles of urban life—the traffic, the crowding, the rudeness, the crime, the high taxes, the fast pace of life and the pressure. They come here because they like the relaxed pace of life, the casual friendliness of the people, the small town atmosphere and all the other things that make rural America great. The last thing most newcomers want is to turn Fannin County into the place they came from. It stands to reason that they are not going to suggest ideas that they believe will change Fannin County for the worse.

That doesn’t mean that all their ideas are good but it does mean that the newcomers are not trying to ruin the place, but rather preserve it and make it better. Thus, the good old boys should be less suspicious of the newcomers’ motives and more receptive to giving their ideas and suggestions some consideration.

Some of the ideas and suggestions of the newcomers may actually be good ones that will enable local government to run more efficiently or more responsively or more cheaply. They may be ideas that will improve the local quality of life or help to protect and preserve the things that make Fannin County so attractive. Many of the people who move to Fannin County held responsible jobs in government and private industry before they came. They should be viewed as a treasure trove of talent, expertise and experience that can be harnessed for the good of the county, rather than officious interlopers bent on the county’s destruction.

Finally, the good old boys need to understand that the newcomers represent a powerful political force. As their numbers grow, their votes will matter, and you can bet they will want to live in a county that is well-run and well managed. After all, it’s their tax dollars at work also.

The good old boys need to remember that change, like it or not, is inevitable. The smart person is the one who manages change rather than runs away from it.

On Retirement

This blog is about my experiences moving to rural North Georgia following a busy career as a trial attorney in crowded Pinellas County, Florida. There are two parts to that experience. One is adapting to life in a rural area, and the other is being retired. This post addresses the latter.

You may think that being retired is easy because it’s nothing more than not having to go to work every day. You’re wrong. For many people it takes quite a bit of work, thought and adjustment to enjoy retirement.

If you’re married, one of the things you’ve got to adjust to in retirement is being around your spouse all the time. Unless the two of you were a professional dance team or worked together in some other way, retirement is the first time in your life when you have the opportunity to spend every minute of every day with your spouse.

Don’t do it. It will ruin your marriage faster than a paternity notice from a former secretary. I don’t care how good your relationship is, being together that much will drive one or both of you bat shit. If you think I’m joking do a google search on the divorce rate after retirement. It’s high, and it’s rising. Husbands and wives were never meant to spend that much time together. I think it’s a genetic thing. We’re two different species. I know that’s not a politically correct view, but Gloria Steinem be damned.

To give your marriage any chance of surviving retirement you and your spouse need to get away from each other as much as possible. Join different clubs. Take up different hobbies. Have different friends. Do whatever is necessary to avoid spending all your time together. At the very least it will give you something to talk about over the dinner table when one of you asks, “So, how as your day?”

Which leads to my second point. You only have two choices when you retire—stay active or rot. If you don’t want to rot, then you better stay active. And when I say stay active, I’m not talking about playing golf every day or whatever it was that you did as a diversion from work. You’ll find that those things grow old quickly when you can do them all the time. I’m talking about doing challenging things. Things that will occasionally make it seem like you’re back at work. Things that place a demand on your time, your intellect and your abilities. Learn a new trade or skill. Go back to college. Volunteer to use your skills and experience to help some organization in the community. Take on City Hall. Find windmills to tilt at.

Some people find the transition from work to retirement very difficult. There are those who have worked so long and hard at their job that it has come to define who they are. When retirement rolls around they cannot take off the suit or the uniform and find another identity. This is a particular problem among professionals like lawyers, doctors and the military. Many of them end up dead or an alcoholic within a few years after retirement because they cannot make the transition.

For other people retirement comes easy. I’m lucky because I’m one of those. I walked away from my career without a backward glance. I was done with it. It was time to do something else.

Part of the reason it was easy for me to transition into retirement is because I never lost my other interests. So for me retirement is a great opportunity to attempt all thing other things I want to do in life but did not have the time for when I worked.

But more than that, I think retirement has been easy for me because of my screwed up personality. Some people go through the forest of life like an Indian (er, excuse me, Native American); they never touch a tree or break a branch. I seem to run over and through every damn tree in the forest. By nature I’m the bull in the china shop, the fart in the space capsule, the burr under the saddle and the one fish that’s swimming upstream. When they say that nine out of ten people agree, the odds are that I’m the tenth person. If everyone in the room thinks something’s great, I have this innate compulsion to take the contrary view. And I have difficulty keeping my mouth shut.

I can’t help myself. I was born to be a pain in the ass. But that’s a great thing when it comes to life after retirement. It means that every day is a challenge whether I want it to be or not. If you have the same personality be grateful. It means that you’ll always have your hands full in retirement, and that’s a good thing.

So let’s go over my simple rules for a successful retirement. Don’t hang around your spouse all the time. Get involved in challenging and demanding activities. Be a cantankerous, contrary, difficult, garrulous pain in the butt.

Works for me.

Out, Out Damned Groundhog

It is said by Victorians, pantywaists and third grade teachers that swearing indicates a limited vocabulary and a small mind. I concede that it shows a certain coarseness and lack proper upbringing, but there are times when saying things the nice way doesn’t give proper vent to the depth and complexity of your feelings or provide as much cathartic satisfaction as being lewd and crude. Still, I’m mindful of the fact that some of the people who read this blog may be of the genteel persuasion, so I won’t say what’s going through my head, I’ll just think it: Fuck You Groundhog!!

Yes, my garden is under attack from a groundhog again. So far the cabbages I planted for my fall garden have suffered about 20 percent casualties. It’s so frustrating. Until you’ve spent the hours that I have planting and tending my cabbage crop you cannot appreciate the anger I feel toward Mr. Groundhog.

It’s embarrassing. Here I am, supposedly a prime example of the dominant species on the planet, and I’m being attacked by a furry little freak with a brain the size of a marble and no intrinsic value on the animal scale. What is particularly galling is that so far the furry little freak is winning. The score is Fuzzball 1, Homo sapiens 0.

What good are groundhogs? Animals can be graceful, majestic, cute, or unique. Some are valuable for their meat, milk or fur. Some provide companionship or entertainment. Other can be good for the environment or prey on pests. There are many reason why we like, value or protect animals. As far as I can see, groundhogs are one of the few animals that have no saving grace. It seems that groundhogs exist only to attack vegetable gardens and prey on the hard work of others. In that sense they are a lot like politicians.

But at this point I really don’t care if the groundhog that’s attacking my garden is a wonder of nature, can solve quadratic equations and cure the common cold. It has attacked my cabbages, and an attack on my cabbages is an attack on me. It’s my version of NATO. I am duty-bound to eliminate the threat.

I have researched the best ways to send Mr. Groundhog to that great burrow in the sky. Someone suggested I drive to Tennessee, buy the biggest firecracker I can find and toss it down the burrow. The theory is that the overpressure of the explosion will kill the groundhog. I’m still mulling that one over. I think it may take a bigger firecracker than I can buy.

Another person suggested piping car exhaust down the groundhog hole. That has possibilities.

Yet another suggestion is to buy a ferret and send it down the groundhog’s burrow. I’m not so sure about that one.

I’ve been reading about the battles the Marines fought in the Pacific in World War II. Flamethrowers were pretty effective against Japanese pillboxes. That gave me the idea of bleeding propane into groundhog’s burrow and igniting it. My only concern is that the burrow is under my pole barn, and there is a chance I may blow up my pole barn or burn it down. I’m not prepared to go that far just to kill Mr. Groundhog…yet.

So I have taken what I consider a reasonable, measured response to the problem. I bought a couple of traps. One of the traps is absolutely vicious. It’s a miniature bear trap, and it scares the hell out of me. It could easily break a finger when it snaps shut. Just the act of setting it is enough to make me break out in a cold sweat. Once it’s set I have to sneak the bait onto a plate in the center of the trap, and that brings my hand into the danger zone. I now know how it feels like to be an explosive ordinance disposal technician.

The other trap is a live trap. It’s basically a long wire box with a trap door at one end. The company that makes it must have a perverted sense of humor. When I took the trap out of the box I discovered that the instructions on how to open the trap were inside the trap. This is an example of the sink or swim method of instruction. By the time I figured out how to get the instructions out of the trap I didn’t need the instructions.

So far the miniature bear trap has not caught anything. What is a little disconcerting to me is that there is some animal out there that can take the bait off the trigger and still not set off the trap. The only explanations I can think of are that it is an animal that is too small to trigger the trap or an animal that is smarter and more dexterous than I am.

The live trap has worked. So far it’s been hell on possums. I’ve caught two of them, but that’s not much of an achievement. Around here they say that possums were at the back of the line when God gave out brains. I don’t know about that, but they certainly look like they were made out of leftover body parts.

So that’s where things stand. Mr. Groundhog is still lurking out there waiting for the right time to devastate my garden, and I’m still casting about for ways to eliminate the threat. Little did I know that I would be spending my retirement locked in mortal combat with predacious creatures that are far below me on the evolutionary tree. Now that I think about it, it’s not too much different than doing battle with plaintiffs’ attorneys, and I did that for 37 years.