T just phoned to tell us that Brazoria County is under a mandatory evac order and “I’ll be home in the middle of the night tonight.” Which is good. I think getting the hell away from the coast, along about now, is just a fine idea. Which ain’t to mention that if we do get the weather that may come (potential for winds gusting to 110 km/h and heavy rain), we may need all the help here we can get. Our black walnut almost went over during the last bad storm—the only thing that prevented it was the major root that’s grown under the front sidewalk, and even so it heaved the sidewalk badly. If it falls, it’s going to go right into the 68kV distribution line that runs next to the house.
or maybe it won’t be funny. Or maybe it won’t be a thing. I won’t even begin to know until I’ve seen him, sometime tomorrow morning.
that it is SO BLEEDIN’ DIFFICULT to type the letters E-G-B-D-F in sequence? I’ve known them in context since I was maybe six, it doesn’t have any hard reaches on the keyboard . . . so what’s my problem with it??
(Backstory: I’m scanning the cover of the Moody Blues’ Every Good Boy Deserves Favour. Due to the relative sizes of the scanner bed and the album cover, I have to do the front and back in four passes each, and then stick ’em together in Photoshop. To keep them identifiable in the folder where I store all my scans, I’m slugging them as “egbdfn.png.”)
Why did you choose your user name? Is there any special meaning or story behind it?
It was 1997, I was about to sign up for my first Net account that didn’t involve a .edu domain, and was fishing for a username. I told my wife I was trying to think of one that fitted me, and she immediately answered “Curmudgeon!” I pointed out that wouldn’t do because the ISP required DOS-like eight-byte names. She thought a minute, and replied “C-U-R-M-U-D-G-N.” And there I was, and I’ve been using that name (with variants) all over the Net ever since.
(One other thing I forgot to mention in Rutherfordton—a town I think I’d like to re-visit someday— was a coffee shop/restaurant/bar in one end of a storefront, near the courthouse, with the most appropriate name I’d seen in a long time: Legal Grounds).
A few miles away outside Marion, the county seat of McDowell County, Garden Hill, the home of Joseph M. Carson’s father, John Hazard Carson, and my original immigrant ancestor in that line (1773), is still standing and in almost its original form, having survived both General Stoneman’s raiders in 1865, a fire in 1894, and a series of later owners. It’s now owned by a non-profit foundation. The house was more or less closed for some required repairs and ADA-type alterations, but the one staff member who was there was delighted to hear that a direct Carson descendant had come from so far away to see the house, and basically gave us the run of the place. She showed us round the first floor and added some bits to the standard tour-guide spiel to place the various ancestors in their context for us. Then she told us to take ourselves round and look at whatever else we liked in the house, which meant we got to go up to the third story, normally closed to tourists, and see some of the bones of the house in the attic, which I believe they’re getting ready to open in the next season or two. She also let me take pictures of whatever I liked (although unfortunately, I lost all of them in a hard drive accident last month).
We continued west on US 70, avoiding I-40 because I-40, and got to the oddly named town of Old Fort, named after the Revolutionary-era Davidson’s Fort, built for defense against the Cherokee. It was lunchtime. It was always lunchtime. We stopped at the train depot, which is an always thing if L can manage it, because me and trains. They had a nice photo exhibit up, around the Southern Railway which ran through town. M, though, was feeling hungry and a little fretful, so we ate at a luncheonette in a converted commercial building right across the street.
Once done there, we drove on to Asheville and stopped at the Folk Art Center. The center is an outgrowth of a nineteenth-century Presbyterian missionary’s interest in traditional Appalachian arts and crafts, and now serves as the hub for a lively and growing crafts guild stretching across the Southeast. L wanted to see the quilts they had up (of course), but wasn’t best pleased that some of them were hung way high, so she couldn’t inspect the detail and stitching. I liked the wooden treenware they offered in the gift shop, so L bought me a pasta strainer and French rolling pin, both carved from walnut.
A little later we ran into a roadblock, literally. A barricade stood in the road, with a sign telling us a rockslide on the Parkway had closed the road, so we had to turn around and backtrack to Marion, at which point we changed out driving (I had been, but I was frankly feeling the stress of mountain roads) and wove up state highway 80 to get back to the Parkway above the rockfall. L enjoyed driving the switchbacks around the mountains and getting to play with the clutch and shifter.
The Parkway is now complete north and east of Asheville, which it wasn’t when we came through in 1985, so we didn’t have to get onto US 221 and drive the stretch where I once scared the daylights out of L, shoving the Battlewagon over a two-lane highway with no guardrails at all around a bunch of REALLY STEEP hills. Our plan was to stop for dinner at Boone, where we knew of a really good steak house that served the college community, but discovered it had closed and the building was vacant. So we wound up at a really undistinguished chain restaurant, so undistinguished I can’t even remember its name, and went on to Salem, where we spent the night. Near Deep Gap, I saw a sign that we were driving on the “Doc and Merle Watson Highway, which was completely the right thing.
Our ultimate goal for Thursday was Old Salem, a preservation/re-creation of the original Moravian settlement at Salem, North Carolina. It was described as “Colonial Williamsburg without the pretension,” which is pretty accurate. It doesn’t have the size or scope of Williamsburg, either; they concentrate on the Moravian community which, being (1) religious and (2) consequently more homogeneous, took the narrower focus without harm.
One of the big things L thought I would enjoy was MESDA, the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts. The museum tours are time-certain, and since we’d arrived shortly before noon, we paid for places in the 1:00 PM tour, then went up the street to find lunch.
Lunch presented itself at the Salem Tavern, where we got in just before the lunch rush. L had salmon corn cakes, which turned out similar to Maryland crab cakes, I ordered the Moravian chicken pie, an acceptable version of chicken pot pie, and M ordered a boring grilled cheese sandwich. The child isn’t quite as unadventurous an eater as her sister is, but she definitely gets into ruts.
After lunch we took a quick hike up into God’s Acre, the common burial ground. I took a few pictures of stones, but they were fairly uninteresting (religious strictures on ornament, I suppose). We got back to MESDA on time, joined our group of two others plus the docent/guide, and … walked, or more accurately shuffled, through room after room after ROOM of domestic interiors. The museum is structured as a linked series of rooms representing domestic architecture on the mid-Atlantic seaboard from southern Maryland to South Carolina, there was NO way to change the docent’s semi-glacial pace through them, and there was NO place to sit. Almost every chair, settle, bench, or what-have-you was an EXHIBIT, and hence off-limits. I hadn’t brought my walking stick, and by halfway through my bad heel was in full flare and in pain with every step … which the docent utterly failed to notice or to offer to accommodate.
When we finally dragged (in my case, staggered) to the end, I was in no condition to walk anywhere for a while, so L and M went downstairs to the Toy Museum, which M turned out to be rather uninterested in—the exhibits were largely mechanicals or static displays that didn’t have a lot to engage her. L thought I might have enjoyed it more, but I hurt too damned much to care.
While we were walking down Main Street and looking at the various shops, L noticed a hatter’s and insisted we go in. I didn’t object so much, because as I&rsuqo;ve gotten older, I’ve gotten to like wearing hats more. The shop is now more a general retail place, but did have several styles of men’s hats, nothing much later than the original shop’s establishment date of 1825. An example of a circa-1800 style called a carriage hat caught my eye, so L didn’t have to persuade too very hard to get me to buy it. It wasn’t quite large enough and the sweatband (heavy leather) had a crease in it that leaves a red mark on my forehead, but I got it anyway.
By now it was mid-afternoon and we had only a couple of hours until they closed for the day, so our “tour” was necessarily limited. We stepped into the gunsmith’s shop for a few minutes, but they were shaping stocks, which isn’t nearly as exciting as watching someone at the forge shaping a barrel, or filing and assembling a lock mechanism. The Single Brothers’ House, where unmarried men and boys lived, was somewhat more interesting since it held the tinsmith/pewterer’s and the tailor’s quarters, as well as a smaller, single-manual version of the large Tannenberg organ that stands in the visitor’s center. Both organs are beautifully restored, beginning from almost total ruins, and quite playable. Along the way we learned some facts about distinctions of dress I wouldn’t have noticed on my own: girl’s and women’s age and marital status was indicated by the color of ribbon used to tie on their caps. Little girls wore red ribbons, unmarried girls and women pink, married women blue, and widows white. (There doesn’t seem to have been a corresponding system for the men, which failed to surprise me.)
Outside and behind the house, we watched a joiner working on shaping a large, free-standing cider press that would eventually stand in the tavern grounds. I took M down to the brothers’ prettily-tended kitchen gardens, which were coming on nicely. On the way back up to the car, we stopped at the public water pump and I demonstrated for M how you got water 250 years ago. The pump handle was well enough balanced that she could even work it herself for a couple of pumps.
Old Salem keeps pretty much business hours and there isn’t a lot to see in the evening, so we didn’t try to stay, but went on to Greensboro for the night.
I seem to remember saying some time ago that I’d write SOMEthing about our trip this year. That hasn’t yet happened, so let me make a start and see.
I can’t tell all that much about the first day, ’cos I was in the grip of, appropriately enough, a case of turista. I gave up on the notion of doing my own driving by the time we reached Bryan, and a little later we stopped at Wally World (in Henderson, I think) and bought a small pillow so I could lean back without getting a crick in my neck. L drove for the rest of the day while I lay back in the passenger’s seat and alternately growled or moaned at everything.
By evening, when we reached our usual stopping place of West Memphis, Arkansas, my cramps let up (although other symptoms stayed with me for the rest of the week) enough that I was able to sit through dinner at Applebee’s. On the way out I startled a table of strangers by asking how long it had taken them to get from Austin. After the obligatory shocked “how did you know we were from Austin?”, I pointed out that one woman at the table was wearing a Tyler’s shirt, which gave away the game.
Next morning we started across Tennessee, with the goal of being at Green River Plantation, where we had reservations, before supper. The plan worked wonderfully all across Tennessee, with beautifully clear and dry weather (I-40 in the rain is a misery), and the few road paving crews we saw only had one lane shut down. But only a few miles into North Carolina, our plan got knocked into a cocked hat. Traffic began slowing down near the entrance to a short tunnel underneath the toe of a ridge, and about a hundred feet further on stopped completely, with no indication that ANYthing was moving or about to move. Gradually the idea that we were all stuck behind something sank in, and cars and trucks alike began shutting down their engines and opening the windows for air.
There was enough breeze moving to clear fumes from the tunnel, so temperatures and smog alike stayed down, but eventually the continued lack of Moving Traffic prompted me to get out and walk down to the other end to see what the holdup might be. At the far end, a group of truckers were standing around visiting, and one of them told me the jam was caused by a semi-rig that had taken a curve too fast and flipped over, blocking the entire road, and there was some kind of hazmat cleanup to be done besides getting the truck clear of the road, all of which the police fire departments were estimating would take two to two and a half hours. (L and I later guessed the hazmat spill might have been diesel from the overturned truck’s tanks.)
After getting that discouraging piece of news, I walked back to our car, spreading the news to other cars along the way. By this point, people were getting tired of being cooped up, so they started getting out, walking out to the ends of the tunnel for air, taking their dogs for walks, and whatever else. The one big problem for almost everyone was the lack of any kind of restrooms for miles. The woods and riverbed that came right up to the edge of the road were full of poison ivy and poison oak, so going out into the trees was just about Right Out.
Fortunately, we had the cooler that we always pack to carry the makings of our picnic lunches on these journeys, so we dined on sandwiches—not at all what we’d wanted, but needs must. Our only worry was that we’d phoned Green River and told them to expect us sometime around seven. Where we were, almost at the bottom of a river bed, cell-phone signals were something that happened to other people, so calling to let them know what happened was impossible.
Almost on cue at 2½ hours, the fire department reopened the highway, and we resumed our interrupted run through the hills. It was an hour or more past full dark when we finally passed Rutherfordton, the nearest town to Green River, and dove down a dark-as-the-inside-of-a-billygoat secondary highway off US 221. We found the driveway (the directions we had were fortunately good), but when we reached the big house, everything was dark, no signs to indicate where we should go, and nobody about . . . except for a big ol’ chocolate-colored houn’dog and an Italian greyhound, both fortunately friendly.
I went round the front and rang the bell a while, trying to attract attention, without success. A few minutes later, I heard a noise that sounded like voices somewhere at the back, so I walked round and, in approved country-manners fashion, hollered “HELLO, THE HOUSE!” and was answered a once by a chorus of teenage-female screams. (L claims they were even in harmony.)
After things sorted themselves out, I found that I’d scared the daughter of the house and a couple of her friends, out for an after-dark swim in the pool, out of a year’s growth. At last one of them calmed down enough to get her cell phone and call over to where the family lives, and Grandpa came in a few minutes to show us to our room, in the second story of the eighteenth-century kitchen building. The room wasn’t as much as I’d hoped it’d be, but when you have to travel on a budget, this sometimes happens.
Next morning, while we had breakfast in the big dining room, the woman who’d bought and restored the house came over to talk with us since I was a direct descendant of the original builder. We ended up buying a history of the house and family (which I still haven’t read; it’s mislaid someplace in the house), then wandered the grounds and took some pictures. We tried to walk to the family cemetery at the top of the rise behind the house, but got turned around going through the woods and gave it up.
From there, we drove back into Rutherfordton, let M spend an hour or so at the local storefront children’s museum (not at all bad for what it was), then packed up and drove on toward Old Salem.
What was the first music album you ever bought or owned? Do you still listen to it or have you moved on?
Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme by Simon and Garfunkel. And yes, I’ve still got that same LP, and yes, I still listen to it, forty-two years later.
PBS is broadcasting the national Independence Day concert from the Mall in Washington right now, and they just brought Jerry Lee Lewis on the stage to play. Seeing him, I was sickened and saddened to tears. There was the man who virtually defined the Rock ’n’ Roll Wild Man, just sitting still at the piano, while he walked through two or three of his best-known hits—“Roll Over Beethoven” (yes, that’s a Chuck Berry song, but JLL had a hit with it too), “Whole Lotta Shakin’,” “Great Balls of Fire”—accompanied by a band a full generation his junior (they were only in their sixties).
And JLL just SAT there. He SAT.
How the fuck can it be a JERRY LEE LEWIS show without him goddamn MOVING his ass around the stage? Hell, he was smashing instruments onstage when Pete Townshend was still in short pants!
OK, yeah, JLL is seventy-three years old. He’s seen just about every rockabilly contemporary he had into the grave, from Elvis to Carl Perkins to Warren Smith to Charlie Rich to Roy Orbison, in defiance of every probability you can think of. But to see that OLD MAN . . . being dragged out on stage to try to play the music that was so new and different that he and maybe half a dozen others changed the face of American music with it . . . I could barely stop myself from sobbing at the sight, and I didn’t know whether I wanted more to cry from the pathos of watching him TRY to do it again, or from anger at the people who couldn’t be content to leave him in peace.
As Greil Marcus said about Howlin’ Wolf (a label-mate of JLL’s at Sun Records), his best recordings came on like mini-race riots, or more appropriately, juke-joint brawls (and what JLL didn’t know about THEM, you coulda written on the head of a very small pin). His early singles were two and a half minutes of wild, exhilarating chaos, mixing R&B, swing, country boogie, and pure-dee caveman ethos onto a seven-inch vinyl disc. And like Keith Moon, JLL wasn’t afraid to carry his excess on into his real-world life and then beyond. (If any academic wanted to do it, there’s probably a paper in the similarities between the Weltanschauung of JLL and of The Who.) NOBODY tried to film JLL only from the waist up; instead, when he appeared on the Steve Allen show, Allen and a couple of stage hands began throwing chairs and bottles across the stage during the performance, trying to re-create a bit of the the real, raw, bloody, broken-bottle-in-the-hand juke-joint experience for the audience.
And knowing all that . . . and remembering all that . . . to see the sad, tired, shell of the artist who used to be so wild he was justly nicknamed “Killer” sitting like a plaster statue on the stage, not moving except for his arms still hammering the keyboard, trying to make it sound like it was still 1956 . . . no. Just no, goddamnit. Fucking
Well, fuck that. Fuck ALL of it. Let’s remember Jerry Lee the way he OUGHT to be remembered . . . like this.
We walked in the front door about 7:30 tonight, returned from our Journey to the East. Recap follows over the next few days.
The velocity of an asphalt is a circumambulating fox. Fnord.
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