Henderson County's Brewing Rumble

I'm providing a link on my neighboring county's issue with their Shrrif's Department. This is a compliment to the previous post. This is an opinion peace. I like the writers style. He makes the point I made. We would make good friends.

Hey, my lucky number...13. Your's too. I've got 13 followers. My ego is bursting (I'm not dead). If you read this, give me a shout. Call me out on issues, lambast me. Then, "dance around the camp fire, hang around a while". I just looked at the weather back home and it calls for precious rain. I also realised Friday is the 13th. A black cat crossed my path today too. Do you think this is a good thing?

Cracker singing "Sweet Patatoe"


Lucky me
The Appalachianist

Hemlocks of Carolina

The Middle East is not like anywhere else. Everything, other than the base needs and desires is different than anything we Americans grew up with. To me everything here is "flimsy". Flimsy designs, flimsy in every sense. Flimsy in a way that I don't think I can get you to understand. Honestly, a few people that I know back in Eden have expressed an accuracy to me in their comprehension of this world. Usually those people are Transplantavanians that came back to the ground they knew as home.

I call there Eden, but, I know full and well it ain't. Other than the fact Eden was abolished with the advent of sin, home is a place of turmoil, confusion and drama. It's a culture war back home, it's fought every day, it never rages, just simmers in the summer heat and glows on winter nights. At times, it appears we've had the lick, and then at others we're hanging on better than ever. It's not waged as much as outsider versus insider as much as it is the new with the old.


There's a biological war as well. The hemlocks have taken a bad bad beating. They stand like skeletons, once proud and now sad old snags. Taken down by a little insect, the Wooly Alleged. Someone here before me had a subscription to North Carolina Wildlife and I picked one up and read an article on the Hemlocks struggle. I remember leaving to Iraq, those few years ago, seeing the green of the Hemlocks and coming home to see them standing without a needle on them.



Just a few years before a beetle had killed many of the pines. Where did these damn insects come from? The orient or just somewhere they should have stayed? You stomach that sight, there's no anesthesia for that pain. You accept that it's happening and pray for an answer...Then you hear some bright fellar is trying to find one. Who is this masked man?

Counter insects have been brought in, they've sprayed the trees...And have crossed some Asian trees to try to build immunity. That last one takes a long time...

Though I'm not one to lament, this ain't the first time I have lamented on this subject and it won't be the last.

The Appalachianist

28712

1 September 2011
I use the internet at the PX food court. Ft. Bliss has a really unique and large Px and Commissary complex. I’m too lazy, you google it, either now or when your done reading. Just check it out. It has music playing classics and oldies. Allot of old school R and B. Now, I hate to be negative, but if you don’t speak up, nothing will get fixed. They play way too many Bee Gee songs. Way too many.
No one pays mind to this blog any more. And, I’m not too sure if I mind that. Don’t let that discourage you, dance around the campfire. Just don’t get crazy and fall in.

I regress. I previously stated that this is my first time in the southwest. Well, no. In July I was in Las Vegas. But, I don’t feel like talking about that. Not that what happened stayed in Vegas. It just didn’t leave.

2nd September

I’m a mountain boy. People have made comments to me about my accent. I’ve used words that have raised some laughs. These words I know are not exclusive to Appalachia. The Chief of Staff (A full Bird Colonel) used the same term… “A slew of”. They didn’t laugh at him, but he validated me and well, I hope it inspired them. Now, I don’t mind the laughs. I laughed with them. Damn Seattle people…

7th September
Believe it or not, I don’t like complaining. But somewhere I must have inherited paticuluarness. Or it’s my astrological sign, or just the way God made me or how he tolerates me. So, already you are wondering what I’m about to complain about. I’m going to complain about a place I’d love to be right now, Buttholeville. Yes, odd, quircky and overall great place to live, Brevard NC. County seat to Strangelvania…Uh, Transylvania County.

What happened is the county turned 150 years old. Who would have thought we’d make it that far. Being after the place became it’s own county it was a dangerous and depressing place to be during the 1860’s. But, it is what it is today. And, we’ve seen better times, at this point, it’s on a down hill slope in the economical sense. Socially it’s always been different, but not so much that it distracts you. Though, in my personal opinion, it’s socially depressed.

What distracted me was… I read about it in the Hendersonville paper. They had a big to do down town. The usual celebration stuff. Except a Barney Fife impersonator was there, “making the place feel even more like Mayberry”. People that place never has been, is not and never will be Mayberry. We’ve got a sandwich shop on Mainstreet now called Mayberry’s. I ate there once, it was OK. Service was decent. The waitress didn’t call me “honey, sugar, sweety” or nothing. I’m not holding that against her.
Oh, but, no. We’re not Mayberry. We’re Brevard. We’re unique as is Franklin and Waynesville is to themselves. That’s Mountain Communities. It goes for Sylva or Saluda. We’re a small town with our own riffs, secrets, politics, laughs and joys. We’re often divided, too damn independent to stand up together and never sure as how to do it, much less on what to do it for. And, yet, the “everybody knows everyone” syndrome is not all bad. You know who’s who and what’s what adding to the overall piece of things. But, that can get ugly all the same. On one of the most beautiful and peaceful stretches of road of the county a very gruesome thing happened once. And, the story only attests to how much someone can hate another. We’re not sadistic or mean people, but then we’re not always nice either. Things can be very personal in rural societies. That goes for kindness as well. I will repay a favor to someone for having the same last name of someone kind to me. Except for McCalls, Galloways and Owens. There’s too darn many of them…Just kidding. I’m related to all three, and not to all of them. Not all at once, that is. But, seriously, If I meet someone from another Mountain community with a possible tie to someone I’ve known through the Service, or I’ve hunted with, and, they were good people. I look after that person. Being nice is personal, and being a jerk is too. If one of those kind that I mentioned were not as good to me, I treat the person with caution. Meanness can be hereditary, birds of the same feather flock together.

Not to say all is meanness. At times we are naive, and at others we are as smart as anyone and no one is really that innocent. Brevard NC is a great place. No other place I’d rather be. That goes for the county. My people chose a good place all of those years ago. We struggle, we win we lose. Were not innocent, we’re not charmed. Please, don’t associate us with Mayberry. Mayberry was only associated with typical small town quirks. Not the other way around. You want to live in Mayberry? Turn on your TV.

What do they teach them in OCS?
The Appalachianist

Hope for Hemlocks

I'm in the Pacific Northwest. I wouldn't live here, not even for Love. I do have a tinge of jealousy for here though. They're evergreens are standing pretty and tall. This is where I explain...

I'm from Transylvania County NC. It's one of the greenest* places in the country. But, over the last few years we've lost some of our finest greenery, the Hemlocks. The woolly adelgid has been eating them something fierce. One of my last acts, and it was only a detour in taking care of business, was to drive up Davidson River over to Balsam Grove. It's lined with the snags of once proud Hemlocks. It's no longer a new sight to me to see naked, dead Hemlock standing on a mountainside. That was to me when I returned from Iraq. The dark green had turned a dull gray. It's a sad sight. But, as always when I stare out at the lifeless limbs, and catch sprigs of green. Needles hanging on to limbs on all but the biggest. I really don't know what my grandchildren will see. Like my Grandfathers that knew the Chestnut, all but lost to my generation. Then there is one, a sapling, but ancient no longer shaded by it's parent tree, raising up to reach the sun.

The sun, Before long I will see it in it's worst context, in a desert. Lifeless desert. Oh, I know life is there, but, that is the best words to describe it. Deployment is so aggravating. This is so different than when I deployed before. That predeployment was more organized, still full of changes, but far more organized than what is happening with this one. It's a different kind of deployment though. Before when I was going to Iraq, my year was nothing but uncetain, where I would be, who I would be with and what I would do. Otherwise, the day to day was lined out. Not that it is not lined out here, but, it's a whole different set of circumstances. I have bitter thoughts comparing it to before, then I have to remind myself, the Army changed the deployment rules, how they want to deploy Reservist from my time in 06. It's a broken up process and that creates issues of it's own. Things get lost...Time is lost.

But unlike in 2006, I don't think the Hemlocks are doomed. I know where they are all green, not a snag among them. At least, the last time I was at one of those places. So, I grit my teeth in these temporary circumstances and know, just like for the Hemlocks, there is hope.

Today marks 25 years of the Army. It's been all of my adult life.
The Appalachianist


*I'm not talking the Environmental Fad