Ronnie…..Paula…..and MaggieWe left our home in the tropics, my wife and I, to follow the lure of what little work we could find in a wonderful place… Appalachia. I’d like to share a few emails we sent to friends we left behind, so keep your tongue in your cheek and enjoy a few experiences with us……..
The United States ….I sometimes wonder how that can be possible when we are so divided culturally, spiritually and even phonetically. Where I presently reside for instance…..Appalachia. It’s a place where all the roads and all the families hold very common and familiar names. There are Deharts and Cochrans, Suttons and Breedloves and precious little else since they all arrived here in the 50s and 60s, er, 1850s and 1860s that is…..you might well imagine the difficulty of explaining my somewhat exotic French last name .
Once in a while I find myself confronted with querries such as….“Do ye lahk bar meat ?”….and in my ingrained cityfied thought process what immediately springs to mind is , well, Slim Jims or pepperoni sticks or something and so of course answer “Sure”
“How ye lahk it fixed?”
“Well straight out of the cellophane is best…I guess” ……and its usually at this moment when I end up locking eyes with someone while we both stand there realizing the other guy is just simply from another planet. I keep fergettin a bar round here got four legs.
I’m pretty much accepted here but I know what they say about me when I can’t hear …..”He’s a pretty good Boy allright, but he just ain’t always got his mind set on the conversation to hand” The South has given me so much to babble on about I sometimes think I should be more grateful for all the stories its given me to tell . Simple things amuse me most, I remember being amused at how yard sales in Florida always start on Fridays….Fridays??…well that’s nothing.
Now I find myself in a part of the world that holds flea markets on Tuesdays and Wednesdays and I’ll tell ya, in this part of Appalachia these can prove to be quite culturally enlightening and so last Tuesday we went to one some 30 miles west of us. Now to set the scene I need you to realize that just west of here is so Bible Belt that you can feel the stares when everyone in the diner notices that you are the only couple to fail to say Grace before immediately sinking your teeth into that BLT the moment the waitress delivers it. I got to thinking I better hurry up and eat and beat it to the flea market before being dragged off and in the name of Jesus re-baptized in the creak below the Baptist Church on the hill just outside of town,……..
Now…. The Flea Market….as adventurous as an Arabian bazaar with a language and or accent so thick that it could in no manner be misconstrued for any form of the English language. Only the multitudes of 1985 Ford and Chevy pickups with Stars and Bars flags drive home the fact I might actually be in the USA. The market is a place where wonderfully sturdy forty year old hay rakes hand crafted out of local wood and without nails or screws can be found….and the salesman, completely oblivious to its artsy fartsy decorative potential, has no doubt he is selling a still very useful tool and not an ornament. And tables and tailgates of hunting rifles and shotguns which on occasion can be heard being tried out behind the line of pickups. And that brings us to the star of the story…..an old guy easily pushing 90 sitting on a tailgate with only two items for sale and as we passed he asked….
“Need a gun ?”….. and so we stopped to look at a pile of splintered wood and rust which vaguely resembled a single shot 12 gauge and a rusty pump action with a cracked fore end and butt stock wrapped in black electrical tape.
“Every ones buying guns now ya know” and he then continued on, telling the wife and I his theory that the current president will be the cause of an uprising and revolutionary bloodshed when he attempts to strip us of our Constitutional rights and heritage. He almost seemed hopefull and so I asked….
“You praying for all this Sir?”
“Good Lord ah caint pray for nuthin lahk thet, tain‘t Christian…………but Ah kin hope ya know” he said
Maybe I should have bought the damn things off of him, maybe with something else to sell he’d have another topic of conversation while he was out in public. But then again, it seems as though failing to say grace in the diner brought more frowns than his conversation here.
I came home with a vintage Schrade pocket knife made in the U.S. and still unused in the box for ten bucks and a slight inkling to purchase a shotgun.
Once in a while I find myself confronted with querries such as….“Do ye lahk bar meat ?”….and in my ingrained cityfied thought process what immediately springs to mind is , well, Slim Jims or pepperoni sticks or something and so of course answer “Sure”
“How ye lahk it fixed?”
“Well straight out of the cellophane is best…I guess” ……and its usually at this moment when I end up locking eyes with someone while we both stand there realizing the other guy is just simply from another planet. I keep fergettin a bar round here got four legs.
I’m pretty much accepted here but I know what they say about me when I can’t hear …..”He’s a pretty good Boy allright, but he just ain’t always got his mind set on the conversation to hand” The South has given me so much to babble on about I sometimes think I should be more grateful for all the stories its given me to tell . Simple things amuse me most, I remember being amused at how yard sales in Florida always start on Fridays….Fridays??…well that’s nothing.
Now I find myself in a part of the world that holds flea markets on Tuesdays and Wednesdays and I’ll tell ya, in this part of Appalachia these can prove to be quite culturally enlightening and so last Tuesday we went to one some 30 miles west of us. Now to set the scene I need you to realize that just west of here is so Bible Belt that you can feel the stares when everyone in the diner notices that you are the only couple to fail to say Grace before immediately sinking your teeth into that BLT the moment the waitress delivers it. I got to thinking I better hurry up and eat and beat it to the flea market before being dragged off and in the name of Jesus re-baptized in the creak below the Baptist Church on the hill just outside of town,……..
Now…. The Flea Market….as adventurous as an Arabian bazaar with a language and or accent so thick that it could in no manner be misconstrued for any form of the English language. Only the multitudes of 1985 Ford and Chevy pickups with Stars and Bars flags drive home the fact I might actually be in the USA. The market is a place where wonderfully sturdy forty year old hay rakes hand crafted out of local wood and without nails or screws can be found….and the salesman, completely oblivious to its artsy fartsy decorative potential, has no doubt he is selling a still very useful tool and not an ornament. And tables and tailgates of hunting rifles and shotguns which on occasion can be heard being tried out behind the line of pickups. And that brings us to the star of the story…..an old guy easily pushing 90 sitting on a tailgate with only two items for sale and as we passed he asked….
“Need a gun ?”….. and so we stopped to look at a pile of splintered wood and rust which vaguely resembled a single shot 12 gauge and a rusty pump action with a cracked fore end and butt stock wrapped in black electrical tape.
“Every ones buying guns now ya know” and he then continued on, telling the wife and I his theory that the current president will be the cause of an uprising and revolutionary bloodshed when he attempts to strip us of our Constitutional rights and heritage. He almost seemed hopefull and so I asked….
“You praying for all this Sir?”
“Good Lord ah caint pray for nuthin lahk thet, tain‘t Christian…………but Ah kin hope ya know” he said
Maybe I should have bought the damn things off of him, maybe with something else to sell he’d have another topic of conversation while he was out in public. But then again, it seems as though failing to say grace in the diner brought more frowns than his conversation here.
I came home with a vintage Schrade pocket knife made in the U.S. and still unused in the box for ten bucks and a slight inkling to purchase a shotgun.
get back to ya soon
