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.
Poor Meredith. All my hard work in the garden is starting to pay off, and I’m beginning to harvest a lot of vegetables. To give you an example, for the last couple of weeks I have picked a large basket of green beans daily and over 10 to 15 pounds of tomatoes every other day.
Most of these vegetables are being canned or frozen. And that’s where Meredith enters the picture. I do the growing and picking, and Meredith is in charge of the produce preservation department. And she has been busy. To date, she has prepared and canned over 78 pounds of pickle cucumbers (36 quarts and 20 pints canned) and 88 pounds of tomatoes (26 quarts of pasta sauce), not to mention over four quarts of pickled peppers and five pints of candied Jalapeno peppers. She has also frozen 19 pounds of beans. And there is more to come. As I write she has 15 pounds of tomatoes ready to be made in sauce.
I didn’t realize how time consuming it is to can or freeze large quantities of vegetables. Take the pasta sauce. The tomatoes have to be washed, put in hot water, allowed to cool, have the skins removed, mashed into a paste, put through a sieve to remove the seeds, boiled down to the right consistency with added diced peppers and onions, garlic and oregano and poured into canning jars. After the lids are placed on them the jars have to be boiled for the right amount of time to be preserved.
That’s a lot of work, and I’m starting to feel guilty about all the hours that Meredith is spending in the kitchen doing all that canning and freezing. I hate feeling guilty. Fortunately I have the same ability as most married men to come up with ways to justify the division of labor within the household.
Most men probably do not believe these excuses are sufficient to convince their wives that the division of labor is fair and equitable. That would be tantamount to selling refrigerators to Eskimos. We realize that most experienced wives have long since learned that men are shiftless no-accounts when it comes to household tasks. I believe that men invent these rationalizations in order to avoid having guilty feelings that might otherwise ruin important activities like fishing, laying on the couch watching football, golf and puttering around the workshop making useless things.
There are several tried and true excuses that men rely on to justify not helping out with household chores like canning and freezing. One of them is that “(insert wife’s name) really hates having me under her feet when she’s doing (insert household chore).” I know it’s weak.
Another way men avoid feelings of guilt is by being ignorant or inept. In some cases this is not an invented excuse. I am genuinely ignorant or inept when it comes to so many household tasks. Washing machines and dryers baffle me. I’ll be damned if I can figure out how to set the timer on the coffee maker. In my hands a vacuum cleaner with its cords and hoses is an invitation to disaster or serious injury. I do not know how to can, blanch beans properly or prepare tomato sauce for canning. You might argue that I could learn to do these things. Yeah, well, I’ve been trying to learn how to use the DVR remote control for two years, and how’s that going?
For me, one of the best of the tried and true ways to rationalize why I’m not helping out with the canning and freezing that I cannot do anything in the kitchen without making a mess. Like most men, I unable do something as simple as making a sandwich without leaving a trail of evidence on the countertop in the form of crumbs, spots of mayo, pickle juice, and whatever else has gone into the sandwich of the day—and that’s when I’m are trying to be neat and tidy. If I tried to make tomato sauce from scratch the kitchen would look like the aftermath of an explosion at the Chef Boyardee factory by the time I finished.
I’ve come up a new reason to justify doing the picking and leaving the canning and freezing to Meredith. It protects Meredith from being exposed to the perils of the garden. Laugh if you will, but harvesting vegetables from the garden is not an easy task.
Take pickle picking. It’s a chore to hunt for small cucumbers. They hide under the leaves. You have to get on your hands and knees to find them which means that you’re probably going to put your hand on a slimy slug at some point in the process. The plants are trained to crawl up tent-like frames to keep the fruit off the ground, and you have to crawl under the frames to get at any cucks that have grown there. The sweat is running into your eyes, and then Mr. Horsefly decides to land on your neck. The resulting frenzy of panicked action is not pretty or pleasant. Imagine a man having a grand mal seizure in the middle of a flower bed, and you’ll get the picture.
Picking tomatoes is not a lot of fun either. I’m growing 36 Roma tomato plants. They each produce a lot of tomatoes, and they do so continuously throughout the season. You have to pick the ripe ones and leave the others on the plant to get ripe. The plants are big and bushy which means that you have to bend over or squat to find the ripe tomatoes. When I’m through picking tomatoes for the day I feel like I need physical therapy. But that’s not the worst. The worst is when you encounter a tomato hornworm caterpillar. I’m not exaggerating. These things are as long and as thick as a large man’s middle finger. The first time I reached into a tomato plant and one fell on my arm I about soiled my pants.
Even picking green beans is not without its perils. I grew pole beans on seven-foot tall frames this year. I don’t have to bend over to pick the beans like I did with the bush beans last year. It’s easy on my back. What could be more pleasant? But green beans produce blossoms, and blossoms attract bees—big bees and little bees, but particularly bumblebees.
Bumblebees are huge. Science suggests they should not be able to fly given the size of their wings. But they do fly, and they sound like an A-10 Warthog on a strafing run. Apparently human ears resemble large bean blossoms because bumblebees seem to spend a lot time investigating ear holes from close range. When you’re standing between two seven-foot walls of green beans with a basket in one hand and picked beans in the other and a large, fuzzy, buzzing bumblebee threatens to get intimate with your ear it takes a lot of willpower and dedication to the task not to cut and run.
The way I figure it, facing the perils of picking is a fair trade for the work of canning and freezing, and that assuages any feeling of guilt I might have about not helping out when I see Meredith slaving away in the kitchen. And if that excuse starts to wear thin after a while, give me time—I’m pretty sure I can come up with another.
Several times a week the thought occurs to me that moving to a rural area in North Georgia Mountains after I retired is one of the best things I’ve ever done. There are many, many reasons I believe that. Some of them are big, complicated reasons, and some are small, simple reasons. Many times the thought is triggered by some event that has no great significance in and of itself other than to remind me that I no longer live in Pinellas County, Florida.
For instance, a few evenings ago I drove through a violent mountain thunderstorm. I experienced some hellacious thunderstorms when I lived in Florida, but a thunderstorm in the North Georgia Mountains is a different animal.
I had been to a meeting of the Fannin County Master Gardeners. Evening thunderstorms had been predicted on the morning news. One of the Master Gardeners received a text from her husband near the end of the meeting and announced, “It just crossed the border.” That’s all it took for the meeting to adjourn instantly and everyone to scurry to their cars. We moved quicker than Congress during an anthrax scare.
I was halfway home on a narrow, winding back road when the storm struck. Lightening arced across the sky, and loud peals of thunder rolled and echoed through the mountains. Strong gusts of wind presaged the storm. The tall grass in the fields besides the road lay over in moving waves, and the limbs of the trees began to whip violently to and fro. Leaves and twigs flew through the air across the road in front of me. I was half expecting to see an airborne squirrel. It grew dark, and then the rain hit—torrential sheets of rain that obscured my view of the road ahead despite the best efforts of my wipers. The rain fell so hard that the roadside ditches were quickly filled with swift running water.
I had to swerve several times to avoid large tree limbs that had fallen on the road, and I began to worry that I might get hit by a large branch or even an entire tree. That’s not an irrational fear. There are so many trees here in the mountains, and you often see blown over trees. In Pinellas County, which is largely paved over, the chance of getting hit by a fallen tree in a storm is minimal. You have a better chance of getting hit by a windblown homeless person. In fact, the next day I drove the same route to town and saw that a large tree had fallen across the road less than a mile from my cabin. It had taken out the power line. The trunk of the tree was at least 20 inches in diameter. I realized that the tree had fallen the night before in the ten minute interval between the time I passed it and the time I got home to find the power out. That’s getting too close for comfort.
To me a thunderstorm in the mountains is a closer, more personal and immediate experience than one in Florida. I think that’s because the struggle between the power of storm and the resilience of nature is more visible. Whatever the reason, the storm was another reminder that I now live in a different place.
Here’s another example of the type of small event that can remind me that things are different in a small rural community. I was sitting in my truck behind a car stopped at a light at an intersection with the main highway through Fannin County. The sun was beating down, and it was a really hot day. There was a smiling young man with a backpack at the corner of the intersection. He had a large, worn Bible in his hand, and he was witnessing to his faith in a quiet and restrained way. He wasn’t bothering anyone. He didn’t have a sign saying that I was going to hell if I don’t repent or that the end was near.
The man in the car ahead of me rolled down his window and called to the young man. There was a brief conversation, and then the man in the car extended his arm out the window with a baseball hat in his hand. The young man walked over, took the hat, thanked the man, put it on his head and walked back to where he was standing. The light changed, and we all proceeded on our way.
I’m not sure why, but there was something about the incident that made me think that life is different in a rural area away from the city or crowded suburbia. It also made me thankful that I chose to move to the country. And, yes, I can be accused of overly romanticizing this place, and I know that random acts of kindness happen everywhere, even in the populous places, but happiness is as much a state of mind as it is a state of being, and I find that I am happier here.
Finally, I was sitting on the downstairs porch putting on my boots early one morning when I noticed a strange turd on the edge of the deck. One notices these things, and I know it had not been there the day before. I wondered what animal had left it there. Was it a harmless forest critter or one that could do mischief to the cabin or my garden like a groundhog or a raccoon? Was it a weasel, a possum, a fox or any one of the many small critters that live in this place?
I found myself smiling at the thought that I was devoting so much mental energy to analyzing a turd. That, too, was a reminder that I no longer live in a suburban environment teeming with people but short on wildlife. The way I figure it, any time you live in a place where a strange turd can bring a smile to your face and make you appreciate where you are, you’re probably living where you should be.
Some time ago, on a whim, I bought the 2015 Old Farmer’s Almanac (OFA). I skimmed through it, then laid it aside. Recently I started reading it more closely because it occurred to me that it may contain useful gardening information. It is, after all, an old farmer’s almanac. Furthermore, it’s been around 223 years and that must mean that some people find it informative.
Now I’d like to think that I’m at least as smart as an old farmer, but I have to confess that I find parts of OFA to be pretty damn obtuse if not unintelligible.
Let me give you one example. According the dictionary, an almanac is “an annual publication containing a calendar for the coming year, the times of such events and phenomena as anniversaries, sunrises and sunsets, phases of the moon, tides, etc., and other statistical information and related topics.” OFA says that the 27 calendar pages are the “heart” of OFA and what make it a “true almanac” because they present sky sightings and astronomical data.
Since the calendar pages are the heart of OFA that’s where I started my efforts to understand the almanac. The calendar pages give you such data as when the sun and the moon will rise and set, the length of the day, the phase of the moon, and the time of high tide, as well as the moon’s place.
I wasn’t sure what was meant by the “moon’s place.” Luckily, OFA provides the following explanation. The words in brackets are mine.
The Moon’s Place is its astronomical placement in the heavens at midnight. Do not confuse this with the Moon’s astrological place in the zodiac. [Why would I ever think of doing that?] All calculations in the Almanac are based on astronomy, not astrology, except for those on pages 244, 246-247. [Are you kidding me?]
In addition to the 12 constellations of the zodiac, this column may indicate these: Auriga (AUR), a northern constellation between Perseus and Gemini; Cetus (CET), which lies just south of the zodiac, just south of Pisces and Aries; Ophiuchus (OPH), a constellation primarily north of the zodiac but with a small corner between Scorpius and Sagittarius; Orion (ORI), a constellation whose northern limit first reaches the zodiac between Taurus and Gemini; and Sextans (SEX), which lies south of the zodiac except for a corner that just touches it near Leo. [As if I know where the constellations are that I have to locate in order to find AUR, CET, OPH, ORI and SEX.]
Well, that clears that up. Now I know what the moon’s place is even though I have to take an astronomy course to actually locate it. I decided the hell with that. I’ll just walk outside at midnight and look up for the biggest and brightest thing in the night sky. That should be the moon unless there is something else I’m missing.
What OFA does not explain is why in the heck I or an old farmer would need to know this information.
The next thing I discovered is that all the times for the length of day and when the sun and moon rise and fall are for Boston, Massachusetts. I’m not sure I understand that. How many old farmers can there be in Boston?
In order to find out the times for your area you have to go through the complicated process of ascertaining the key letter for your day (sunrise, sunset, moonrise and moonset each have a different key letter for each day), consult a time corrections table located elsewhere in the almanac and then do some calculations. By way of example, here are the instructions for calculating the length of day:
Note the Sun Rise and Sun Set Key letters on the chosen day. In the Time Corrections table on page 252, find your city. Add or subtract the minutes that correspond to the Sun Set Key letter to/from Bostin’s length of day. Reverse the sign (minus to plus, or plus to minus) of the Sun Rise Key letter minutes. Add or subtract it to/from the first result.
I don’t know about you, but I’m lost. The person who wrote these instructions must also write tax form instructions for the IRS. To complicate matters further, you have to make corrections for longitude to determine when the sun and the moon will rise and set in your area, and that requires you to consult a second table.
Thank God we live in the age of the internet where you can find this information on-line. If I lived in the old days and had to use OFA to find this information I’d be thoroughly screwed. The next time anyone implies that old farmers were simple folks I’m going to set the record straight. As far as I’m concerned any old farmer who can use OFA to calculate when the sun will rise is a frigging genius and automatically qualifies for Mensa.
Thankfully, you don’t need to be able to figure out the astronomical stuff to gather information from the calendar pages. For every calendar date OFA gives you pithy information about the day. Most of it is incredibly obscure, and I really don’t understand why an old farmer would give a shit. These are just some of the entries for January:
Jan. 3: Mary Jacob received a patent for a brassiere. [Did old farmer’s wives even wear bras?]
Jan. 15: When wild geese soar overhead, even terrapins stamp their feet on the ground. [What? Is this a coded message?]
Jan. 17: Baseball player Roger Peckinpaugh died, 1977. [Gee, just the other day I was just wondering when he died.]
Jan. 24: Cape Breton Railway opened, N.S., 1890. [For crying out loud, Cape Breton is in Nova Scotia. I bet it has a five day growing season. They’re probably lucky if they can grow radishes. I’m pretty sure the five farmers in Cape Breton don’t really care when the Cape Breton Railway opened. I’m positive the rest of the world doesn’t.]
Jan. 29: Fire destroyed much of Maryland Agricultural College, College Park, Md. [The next time you run into a graduate of Maryland Agricultural College be sure to impress him with that bit of arcane knowledge.]
I could go on and on with the obscure information contained in the calendar pages. It’s worth it to buy OFA just to see what the editors thought an old farmer should know or find interesting. Did you know that the first dental use of nitrous oxide was in 1844 (Dec. 11), that Hiram W. Hayden patented a machine to make brass kettles in 1851 (Dec. 16) or that a 9-lb., 6-oz. chain pickerel was caught in Homerville, Georgia, in 1961 (Feb. 17). I didn’t. I’m amazed I made it this far in life without this information. One thing is certain—I’m never going to challenge an old farmer who reads OFA regularly to a game of Trivial Pursuit.
I’m sure there is valuable gardening information somewhere in the Old Farmer’s Almanac so I’ll keep studying it. I’ll let you know if I find anything interesting.
