One more trip to the steamy port city to the south...

... comes to a close. Actually, it hasn't been too hot here. Even the little lummox seemed to enjoy his romps even though we haven't been walking him as much as he likes. To compensate he has been running around the house like a lunatic. Tomorrow we will take him down to see Mother so she can spoil him. Then on Saturday we pack him up into the car and take off for Wilkes.

Got some nice stuff for Christmas: two bottles of cognac, a book called The Conservative Soul by my favorite conservative blogger, some clothes, treats, etc. Still, I decided we didn't have enough books in the house so tonight while wife, sister-in-law, and sis-in-law's best friend went out on the town (well, to Mellow Mushroom) I ducked out to the local Borders and bought two more books. One can never have too many - despite what Carmen says.

Books are a bit like fountain pens in that respect.

The Man Wilkes County and Wilkesboro were named after....

.... was interesting, if nothing else. He was accounted the ugliest man in England at the time. He was so charming, however, that he insisted that "took him only half an hour to talk away his face."

Born in 1727 he married for money a woman he seems to have cared nothing for. On the other hand, she bore him a daughter whom he was devoted to for the rest of his life, long after he had dumped his wife and earned a reputation as a rake (as was said in those days). He became a member of the Hell Fire Club, a group of disreputable aristocrats who lived up to their name. At some point he helped stage a prank that got the club disbanded (I haven't been able to discover what the prank actually was).

He was at least witty. When the Lord Sandwich shouted to him "'Pon my soul, Wilkes, I don't know whether you'll die upon the gallows or of the pox." Wilkes responded "That depends, my Lord, whether I first embrace your Lordship's principles, or your Lordship's mistresses." When told by a constituent that he would rather vote for the devil, Wilkes responded: "Naturally". He then added: "And if your friend decides against standing, can I count on your vote?"

Elected to parliament he became so outspoken in his views against King George III that he ended up being charged with seditious libel multiple times, shot in a duel by a royal supporter, and exiled to France. He returned, was elected again, and was outlawed and arrested again.

It was his vociferous support of the colonies during the Revolution, basically on the grounds that if the King was for the war, he was against it, earned him the respect of many in the colonies. Thus, Wilkes was named after him as was the chief settlement of the county, Wilkesboro.

John Wilkes Booth was named after him, as were counties in both Georgia and North Carolina and Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.

Oh, one other possible connection to the land of Wilkes. He was the son of a distiller.

Maeréad and the Christmas Story

Maeréad and her parents, along with Clovis, came down to Wilkesboro for dinner last Tuesday. After dinner at Applebee's (which, I learned, has the best mac and cheese for little girls in the whole world) we all came over to our house. Maeréad was certain the little lummox would be excited to see her, but Carmen had given him a greenie and he was too busy chewing on that to pay much attention to anyone. Nothing distracts him from a greenie.

So while the adults all stayed in the family room talking, Maeréad walked out to the living room with me to see our little nativity scene. It's a strange little set of characters, carved by Chinese craftsmen who must have wondered what all these figures were supposed to represent. The little baby Jesus in particular is a little odd: happy face, round head, round nose, and wrapped in what looks like a large white clay pot. The figure cracks me up because it looks exactly like Ziggy from the comics.

Maeréad wanted to know who the figures were. I pointed to the Mummy and Daddy with little baby Ziggy. Then she got interested in the lion and the lamb. She pointed to them and immediately said “They're married.” After a few seconds she turned them over on their sides and said “They're going to bed now.” OK – the Good Book does say that the lion will lie down with the lamb.

Then she turns back to the Holy Family. She points to baby Ziggy in the clay pot and announces in a big voice “This is GOD'S SON!” I say yes. Her eyes light on the rather stunned looking figure of Joseph - “That is God!”

No, No, I say, that's Joseph, Jesus' stepfather.

“That's GOD'S SON – so he must be God!”

Well God can't come down here on Earth, wandering around like he's someone's father, so Joseph is the stepfather, I say.

The theology is suspect, skating completely around the Trinity, and probably several other problems as well, but that seemed to satisfy her. To distract her I pointed to the Angel figure behind little baby Ziggy and asked her who it was.

“A fairy.”

Anyway, that's the Christmas story for four year olds here in the land of Wilkes.


Next year I'm getting the Nativity Scene carved by Afghan craftsmen. All the male figures have the little flat Afghan hats and beards. The leader of the three kings looks exactly like Osama bin Laden.

La Noche Buena!

Or Christmas Eve as it is known. We have made it all the way down to the unnamed port city to the south where we own a small townhouse. Today Carmen and I went out on one long rush and got the rest of our Christmas shopping done. What a relief. There are so many more people and cars and everything than last year. Maybe that means it will be a good year for the merchants.

Carmen and I were listening to a Spanish station today - hope that doesn't drive Joey too wild. One of the lines in one of their own weird little Christmas songs was roberan la lechon! Or, "someone stole the roast pig!" Lachon, or roast pig, is a traditional Christmas dish among the Cubans and Spaniards down here. As Carmen discovered when she went to her church Christmas dinner in Wilkesboro, it is not among the Mexicans. She had to explain it to them.

So now it is nealy nine, Carmen is fixing dinner, and we have hours of wrapping to look forward to, as we settle into our little townhouse with the sister-in-law, the little lummox, his pal Georgie, and three cats (three other cats were shipped off to the kitty motel for the holidays).

Too much fauna, if you ask me.

The Little Lummox meets a ferret....

... on our walk today. Carmen had run off to the Big City to have fun, so I was left to take The Dog for his walk over at the Community College. Just as we were about to leave he went into full tilt alert and then nearly pulled the leash out of my hand. He had focused on some people who were walking their pet ferret - it looked like a furry slinky with a nozzle on one end and a tail on the other. Lummox was going wild just as Carmen arrived at the parking lot and took him off my hands. She walked him to the other side of the park, about a half mile, and he was still fixated on the spot where he saw the ferret. We think that all that was on his mind was ...

HEY! A LITTLE ANIMAL! KILL! KILL! JUST LET ME AT 'IM!! KILL!

He hasn't felt that way since the last time he saw Tobby the Setter*


*Tobby was a big setter that got into a fight with lummox. He had the lummox's whole head in his mouth when the little killer popped his head out and nearly ripped off Tobby's ear. From that moment on Lummox had only one goal (other than eating and sleeping)in life and that was to kill Tobby, Tobby's owner, Tobby's owner's truck, etc. He is a very single minded critter.

There's always something interesting in the local papers ...

... here in the Land of Wilkes.

A few days ago a woman was arrested for driving while under the influence and leaving the scene of an accident. Seems as she was roaring down Main Street in Wilkesboro she swerved across the road, hit one set of guard rails, then swerved right and hit the other, ripping of her rear bumper which was left in the middle of the road.

With her license plate attached.

In a story that took place even closer to home, in fact right down the street at the Medical Center, the lead paragraph reads:

An Ashe County woman was arrested twice Tuesday on drug charges at the same Wilkesboro location, with the second arrest occurring after she reported finding a methamphetamine (meth) lab in her car trunk.

Well, we all have days like that I suppose.

That traffic accident on 421 ...

... that I mentioned seeing on the bus ride home Monday night has been explained. Four people were injured when someone pulled out of Applebee's restaurant straight into a Sheriff's Deputy's car hauling a prisoner flying down 421.

In another traffic accident of a few days ago, the elderly couple involved died in the same hospital room within minutes of each other when the family gave permission for the life support machines to be cut off. They had been married for 50 years.

When you live in a small community where every accident is reported and followed up on you learn just how devastating automobile accidents are to our society. So why worry about terrorists?

The Traffic on 421

I've noticed the Highway Patrol is once again out on 421 between Boone and Wilkesboro. As soon as they end one campaign to convince the drivers of North Carolina that 55 means 55, they have to start another one.

BTW, my law enforcement friend told me that her department have been told that anything over 65 mph will get you ticketed.

Just in case you were wondering.

So let's be careful out there. The last time I was on the bus we saw another bad accident, this one involving several cars on 421 just west of the Wal-Mart light. It looked pretty bad.

"Apocalypto" made me sick!

Well, not exactly, but I did get sick in the middle of it. It's an extremely violent story about the ancient Mayans back in the days when their civilization was going caca in a hurry - at least so far as Mel Gibson tells it. I may do a review of it someday.

But I was already feeling a little sick when we started for the movie. Several of us went, Clovis, Maeréad's dad, and a couple of colleagues. About halfway through, just as the Mayans were gearing up for the big sacrifice scene I had to run to the bathroom. I stuck it out until the end, but had to duck out a couple of times again.

I felt so bad when it was over that I had Maeréad's dad drive my car over to his house. From their place it is another half hour down the mountain to our house, so we all decided that I would stay over. Maeréad was delighted and wanted to jump on my tummy to celebrate. When I told her that was a bad idea because I might throw up her eyes lit up and I realized that was the wrong thing to say to a four year old. A very curious four year old.

Fortunately her folks dissuaded her and got her off to bed. We stayed up and watched the Attila the Hun episode of Terry Jones' "Barbarians" TV show. Then I was off to the little guest room by 9:30 - an impossibly early hour for me. Slept through the night fairly well and didn't get up until about 9:30 the next day. Felt a lot better.

Good enough to drive home anyway. Since then I have been laying around the house reading. It's nice when you have a good medical excuse to behave the way you want to anyway.

I am free! Free!...

.... I am finally free. Gave my last exam, graded them all, and finally got the grades posted which was no mean feat. The school computer servers were all under attack from millions of false e-mails being sent to them. It meant none of us could post grades until late last week, and even then it took forever. I would put in one page of grades and submit it to the computer, go take the lummox for his walk, and get back just in time for the page to go through so I could input the next page.

Now I won't have to go back to school to work until next August!

So maybe I can be a bit more attentive to Not Mayberry.

Oooops! I forgot to mention on that last post....


... that Bruce the expert bore an uncanny resemblance to a young Al Franken.

Moonshine in Wilkes....

... purely as an academic subject, you understand. Today, since I was already up in Boone, I went over to the History Dept at Appalachian State to listen to a talk by an expert in Appalachian history entitled "Moonshiners on our Mind: Distilling, Prohibition, and Identity in Western North Carolina, 1791-1908. I learned all kinds of things.

For one thing, in 1855 there were only 150 people in Wilkesboro (North Wilkesboro didn't even exist). The reputation of moonshiners had its ups and downs. Before the Civil War they were just good ol' farm boys converting their crop into a value added, easy to transport commodity. During the Civil War they were evil barbarians depriving the local folks of much needed food supplies in order to line their own pockets. After the Civil War they became champions of the anti-Federal resistance and closely allied with the Klu Klux Klan.

Bruce the expert said that when he first did a Google search for 'Moonshiners' the first hit was the home page of the Wilkesboro Chamber of Commerce decrying the stigma of the Moonshine Stereotype.

Gee. Maybe I should change my banner under the Not Mayberry title.


Naahh.

Traffic coming down the mountain from Deep Gap has been dangerous....


.... this week. I rode the bus twice, on Tuesday and Thursday, and both times coming home we passed bad accidents. The first one was a big tractor trailer carrying Christmas trees. The brakes failed and the driver had to pull into the runaway truck ramp so fast that the trailer broke lose and split open, spilling Christmas trees all over the place. Unfortunately the driver was injured and had to be air lifted down to Winston.

The second accident was in a heavy rainstorm where the highway takes a sharp turn right where there is a turn off to the left coming down. All we could see from the bus was cars all over the place, lots of flashing lights, a fire truck, and men in emergency gear. Also one thoroughly torn up car in the middle of the road. Our driver edged through the one lane left open and we were out of it. There was no account of it in the paper the next day.

It may have happened just the other side of the Wilkes/Watauga county line. Apparently the local paper has no interest in accidents in Watauga.

Just the same, let's be careful out there.

I have been neglecting Not Mayberry....

.... Perhaps I am just getting lazy. But I really didn't intend too. I originally thought I would be posting every two or three days, but in looking over my posts it appears to be more like once a week. So, my pre-new year's resolution is to post more often. All I have to do is think of something interesting to say.

But basically it has been a quiet week here at the un-Mayberry of North Carolina. At least as far as the Oscar Lykes household is concerned. Not even the little lummox has had any adventures lately. I'll go have a talk with him.