The demise of one more Wilkesboro business...

I will have to take a day or two or three off from blogging. Just too much work to do at school. But as I was driving around the last few days I noticed that Jerszy's Bar and Grill, one of my favorite watering holes despite its reputation, is no longer in business. I'm not sure if where it is located is in Wilkesboro or North Wilkesboro, but it's always sad to see a business leave town. MHF and I still have not gotten over the absence of El Milenio Dos Mil.

Well, there is always Dooley's. Maybe I'll do a write up on that when I come back.

[Update 30 March: Yesterday I took exams to grade at Dooley's while having my evening tapas. John the Bartender told me that Jerszy's is not closed, but is relocating to Millers Creek. Very odd. It wasn't much more than a year ago that J's left the old hotel by the old Court House to move into the old Quincy's Steak House/Golden China]

A Sweet but insignificant little park...
found at the end of School Street in Wilkesboro, just opposite Wilkesboro Elementary. The little lummox and I walked through it the other day. It has been there for a long time, but was deteriorating. Last week it was cleared out and fine fresh gravel laid down on the trail through it. Several picnic tables are still there though they have begun to fall apart. Perhaps as part of the renovation the city will fix or replace them. The park consists of the little picnic area and a trail through the woods from the school parking lot to Westwood Hills. It is a short trail, but very sweet to walk under the cool darkness of the trees on a hot sunny day. Lummox loves it.

So thanks to the town of Wilkesboro for the new work on the park. The parks in the two Wilkesboros really add to the quality of life here in Wilkes. [Someday soon I should write a bit about the historical character - and 'character' is the right term - whom Wilkesboro and Wilkes County are named after]

Trying to help the Editor of The Record out, a friend of mine wrote out the following letter in reply to Mary Powers letter about John Kerry.


To the Editor:
I read with some interest the letter to the editor written by Mary Powers of Millers Creek.
I was specially intrigued by the quote attributed to Senator John Kerry at President Ronald Reagan's funeral. There were several aspects of the quote which didn't seem right. John Kerry is a practicing Catholic and regularly attends mass: why would he say anything so snide about church-goers? I remember reading in the newspapers at the time of President Reagan's death respectful remarks made by Senator Kerry about the former president, and, furthermore, Senator Kerry stopped campaigning for a week in honor of the official mourning period. I also remember that the funeral at Simi was a small, private affair at which only President Reagan's children and pastor spoke. So neither the content nor the context of the quote made any sense.
I did some research. That particular quote has been circulating on the Internet as part of a chain letter. What the chain letter does not tell you is that the quote is part of a parady press-release which appeared in a joke website called Kerrycore.com (a.k.a. the John F'n Kerry Website). The quote appears at the beginning of an article which, as all good parodies do, becomes wilder and wilder. There is this disclaimer at the end of the story: "The John F'n Kerry Website is a parody website, intended for entertainment purposes only. The articles, comments and information entered upon these web pages should NOT be repeated as the truth or be taken as the real quote, article, event, concept, or happening."
I don't blame ms Powers for passing on this totally fictitious quote. We are so bombarded with information nowadays that it is hard to separate truth from fiction at times; however, I am surprised that The Record having printed ms Power's letter as a pseudo-editorial did not bother to check out the source of the quote. It only took about fifteen minutes to find. I expect better from you.

Respectfully,

[My anonymous friend]



Oh well. The Record, while willing to print a letter reporting facts that are, frankly, not credible, was not willing to print the above letter. I believe the letter writer may have been surprised at this: I was not.

Of course, it is possible that as the second letter writer assumes, it was all simply a mistake made in good faith. I am cynical enough to think otherwise, but that is a mute point.

The Record, the campaign for president in 2004, and, well, a mistake.... at the least. During the last presidential campaign the letter from which the following excerpts were taken was published by The Record, second best paper in the Land of Wilkes.

August 18, 2004
The Record

To the editor,

I have been following the news about the race for the White House. It is obvious that the media wants to influence us into accepting what they think is right. They are utilizing the mechanics of mind control – by focusing on certain ones in the news who will cast a long shadow of doubt about a good person by digging up anything they can find about them and then blowing it way out of proportion so that we are caused to doubt, even that which we know to be right in our hearts, then our loyalty is subtly captured by the ‘other guy.' We are emotionally swept away by these mind benders, thus the wrong people rise to power to fight for our need to justify what we have become through making the wrong choices in the first place. We should let reason, not emotion dictate how we feel and think, what we do, what we believe, not someone else's idea of what is right and wrong.

Ronald Reagan was a good man; I cried when I heard that he had passed on. I always wanted to give him a big hug. I just always liked him! There have been some who have tried to tarnish his good name and integrity. John Kerry at Ronald Reagan's funeral in Simi Valley said, "This moment in Simi Valley is a moment of truth, not just for my campaign but for the future of my party as well. For some of us this may be our only chance to confirm the demise of the man who is soley responsible for turning the American people away from liberal philosophy. As Democrats, we need to put small differences aside and be certain that this man is truly gone. Next, we must reclaim our country from the church-goers, the middle class America and the uneducated conservative masses."

[This is followed by an attack on Michael Moore, and some news from an unnamed soldier calling his Mom from Iraq to tell her to vote for Bush because, among other things, Iraqi children now "have enough to eat, clean water to drink and power to their houses." And a slap at Clinton for failing to attack someone after the first World Trade Center attack.]

That is why I am voting for President Bush, again.

Mary Powers
Millers Creek


Now it should occur to anyone with even a rudimentary understanding of American politics that neither John Kerry nor any other politician running for President would say what he is reported to have said, and certainly not at the very private funeral for Reagan. In other words, this is either someone who is playing a prank on The Record, or someone who fell for the prank and believed it. Or someone trying to deliberately fool The Record and its readers. Apparently Jerry Lankford and Ken Welborn were not able to see through it.

Not that they did not have some help. My next post will be a letter to the same editor written by someone intent on pointing this out.

There is only one thing I don't care for in our Library...
... which is otherwise much better than I would have expected for a community like the Wilkesboros. And that is the use of heavily abridged recorded books. The last trip I made with MFH we listened to An Army at Dawn. It was hacked down by about two thirds and what was left was barely comprehensible. It is a non-fiction account of the American army in the North African campaign at the start of World War II. So much was left out that it was like watching a movie that every now and then would have 15 or 20 minutes cut out of it. Now I am listening to The Historian and it has the same problem. The only difference is I don't feel too bad about missing over 2/3's of schlock like this. But to do it to a brilliant piece of historical research like An Army at Dawn is a sin, if not a crime.

Still, the library insists on doing this for some reason. It is a problem made much worse by the talking book companies now trying to hide as much as possible the fact that they are abridged. I hope this is because the library is trying to stretch their budget (mistakenly in my opinion) and not because they think that their patrons want this mutilated junk.

Does anybody out there know?

One good thing about the The Record...
Someday soon I hope to write about something "Wilkes County's First Worldwide Newspaper" (how's that for self-promotion) did that I thought bordered on dirty political tricks. But first, to be fair, there is something that I and MFH have noticed - it has a first rate photographer! This is especially noticable in the pictures from Aladdin Jr. by the Wilkes Playmakers that ran on the front page last Wednesday (March 8). The picture of Jessica Adams as the Genie is perfect, and the one of Jacob Reeves as Jafar and Brittany Collins as Iago made me want to go out and see the play. Compared to these the photos of the play in the other paper in town were flat and static. No photographer is credited, but whoever it is deserves some recognition.

Now if owner/editor would just pay for quality reproduction of the work....

Now, from an unnamed port city far to the south...
Despite our mutual flu, MFH and I drove for two days to get down here in time for my nephew's wedding. It was an ordeal. The drive, not the wedding, which was a lot of fun. Very multicultural: Vietnamese, Filipinos, one Cuban, and a bunch of Scotch-Irish/German/Welsh Virginians. The food was great. It was provided by the Filipinos, with a bit from the Vietnamese. None of it was supplied by the Scotch-Irish! (Can anyone even name a Scotch-Irish food?). Maybe that is why is was so good.

Since then we have been laying at home, trying to heal. I am annoyed at being sick, and especially annoyed that I gave the flu to my niece Mulan when she came down from the mountains to visit with us last weekend.

So I will be away from the Land of Wilkes for a week or so. Perhaps I will try to figure out how to link other sites that have material related to Wilkes to my site.

I still live!
After three or four days of misery, I think I have recovered from the nastiest flu I have ever had. At first I thought I got it from my students, who live mostly up the mountain, but then I discovered that many of the people I go to church with and many of those MFH works with have come down with it. Suddenly those stories my grandfather used to tell about the great flu epidemic of 1918 (the one in which 14 million people may have died worldwide) don't seem quite so implausible - nor do they seem long ago enough!

So I have done nothing on my blogs, no grading, no writing, very little reading, or anything else that I would usually consider 'constructive'. On the other hand my idea of constructive has changed: laying around all day sleeping, drinking coke, juice and water, and occasionally moving from the bed to the futon to the couch to sleep some more now seems not just constructive, but positively noble.

Finally got out of the house late today to walk the Little Lummox, also known as the Dog. I carefully took him over to Wilkesboro's own splendid dog park, assuming that on a grey Wednesday afternoon no one would be there. No dogs to bother us, I could set on a bench while Lummox scampered to his hearts content. As soon as I got there I noticed that both sides of the fenced area had three to four dogs in it. As soon as I noticed them they notice Lummox the Dog, began to snarl and snap, and Lummox responded in kind. As I was attempting to drag him away, we saw two more people bringing absolutely huge dogs into the park. Lummox wanted to kill them. And he probably would have too if I'd let him off the leash, and if he were not 8 inches tall at the shoulders, with funny little legs and great big penguin feet.

This was supposed to be a quiet little expedition to see if I could handle it while MFH was at work. Instead I find myself wrestling with a demented Corgi/Tasmanian Devil mixed breed. Finally got him in the car before he hurt one of those half dozen big dogs.

One the way out though, I noticed something interesting. On Main Street, across from Dooley's Tavern, there is a new restaurant opening soon. It will be called the Buen Amigo and bills itself as a Restaurante Latina, which may indicate that it won't be strictly Mexican. I will take My Favorite Hispanic there when it opens and report back.

By the way, when she got back from work - she had the flu.

The Troopers are still out....

I view this as a public service announcement. As I drove to work today I passed two more State Troopers giving tickets along 421 between Wilkesboro and Boone.

Apparently this is because a recent report showed that traffic accidents had gone up after the opening of the new four lane. This should have made the road much safer - I drive it both ways at least four times a week and it sure feels safer. The only explanation is that people are driving like idiots. So, the state brings in the troopers.

Let's be careful out there, huh?