WHAT'S
NEW
The Archives
12/29/05: World's Largest Ball of Twine; Tennessee
Shacks
8/1/05: Magnetic Ribbon Practical Joke
7/17/05: World's Largest Ball of Twine
7/11/05: Saint Louis
________________
Well once
again, it seems as though I must apologize for a long absence.
Five months! For the first three of those, I have no excuse.
The last two, my excuse is that I spent every waking moment
outside of work editing my brother-in-law’s wedding video three years
after the wedding… long story, but the end result was worth it.
As much as I feel the need to apologize to you, the faithful
fans (read: Mom, Dad and Lauren), I realize the real one I’ve really
been screwing is myself. It’s
been a long time since I’ve actually sat down and written anything.
I didn’t realize how much I’d missed it until last week when
I finally took an entire evening and got back to work on the Road
Trip piece I’ve been slowly grinding out on this site. And it felt so good to be doing it again.
I won’t make any promises as to when Week
Three will be up because every time I make a prediction the time
stretches out ad nauseum. I’ll
just say that I’m working on it, and I’m loving it.
So much
has happened in the last several months. A couple of them that are relevant to this
site specifically involve correspondence I’ve received from Kansas
and Tennessee, both involving the aforementioned Road Trip. Many of you will recall Lauren and I making
a stop at The World’s Largest
Ball of Twine in Cawker City, Kansas and visiting with a lady
named Lottie Herod who owned the only shop in town selling Ball of
Twine paraphernalia… most of which she made herself. Unfortunately for me, she didn’t make shotglasses, which I was collecting,
so I settled for a Ball of Twine toothpick holder.
Through
the miracle of the internet, somebody typed “hand drawn elevator”
into Google and found my site, specifically the page about Lottie
and the hand-cranked elevator in her shop. He got in contact with Lottie who had Linda Clover, the caretaker
of the twine, contact me via email.
(You following this so far?)
Linda informed me that Lottie now sold shotglasses and if I
sent her my address she would
send me one. Well, I wrote
Lottie a letter with a check and the Cawker City excerpt from the
road journal, and a couple weeks later I got a tidy little package
from The Great Plains Art Gallery.
Inside were two handmade shotglasses, some handmade postcards
and a personal note from Lottie herself.
I am utterly grateful and humbled that Lottie took the time
and I thank her profusely. Of course I now realize that I put my foot
in my mouth when I said that Lottie was “maybe seventy years old.” As she tells me in her letter, “I’m 67 ½ years
old, but some days feel like 80.”
My apologies Lottie, but thank you ever so much for all your
time.
The other
contact I received was via an email from Laura Brown in Kingsport,
Tennessee who had some insights for me on Melungeons and Appalachian
shacks. As you’ll recall,
Lauren and I drove through deep deep hardcore
Appalachia along the same route as one of my favorite author’s
Bill Bryson in order to see the Melungeons; a group (I’m not sure
“race” is the right word) of people whose features are described as
distinctly European with blue eyes, fair hair, lanky build, yet skin
that is “Negro dark,” and who apparently only live in this one area
of Tennessee.
We didn’t
see any Melungeons on our trip and in my research I learned that several
generations of intermarrying have caused the distinct Melungeon “look”
to all but disappear. Laura,
in her email, told me:
“True, most have inter-married, but they are still around, especially old-timers. I saw an elderly fellow in the doctor's office just yesterday, and he just GRINNED at me when I looked... but I have to say I've never seen nor heard of a blonde Melungeon, at least not in these times. They have black, silky hair and kind of an Arabic-but-strangely-dwarfish appearance. Imagine Jerry Stiller with dark skin and black hair. If you're ever back in the area (NE Tennessee, extreme SW Virginia) check out some hospital waiting rooms or really small, mom-n-pop taverns that you really don't want to go into... you'll find the old-timers, and for a beer or two might even get an interview.”
Do with
that what you will, discerning travelers. The next topic Laura discussed was the many
shacks Lauren and I saw while driving through this particular area
of Tennessee. Shacks that
seem to have been abandoned for over fifty years, and have probably
been standing for far longer than that.
I just couldn’t understand why so many of them were still upright. Laura had the answer:
“Most of the ones that seem so sturdy are built of old American Chestnut, although they're rapidly being torn down for the wood... photo while you can! The American Chestnut was all but destroyed in the blight around the turn of the century and only grows to a small size now before the disease gets them. There is a lot of research now going into restoring them. They used to rival the giant Sequoias in size, and absolutely covered these mountains. The wood was incredibly long lasting and great for building. When I saw that shack covered with kudzu vines on your site, I knew exactly where it was... 321 between Hampton, TN and Boone, NC.”
So
there you have it. Thanks
so much Laura for your input.
Well,
now that I’m finally done with this video that has absorbed my life
for the last two months, I’m hoping to get back to maintaining this
website the way I used to do. Also, I made a promise back in the summertime
that I would at least try to update this “What’s New” page at least
once a week, even if I couldn’t get up a new column or blog that often. Either way, please know that I will try to
keep this site current in between a job and raising a very active
little girl who refuses to just sit in front of the TV – and who I
would never want doing so anyway.
Thanks for your patience and for checking back in. I’m back!
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8/1/05
About a month ago I got an idea for a really funny practical
joke. This is the kind of joke you probably could play on your friends
but it would probably be funnier to watch the reaction on the face of
a total stranger. Not to mention, this will probably require at least
one or two of your friends helping you to make it work.
Here's what you do. You go to the parking lot at a mall or a grocery store. Basically someplace where there a whole bunch of cars in one spot and you're not likely to have to wait more than an hour for somebody to come back to theirs. You gather one or two of your friends and fan out across the parking lot removing the magnetic ribbons from every car you see until you have a huge stack of them. You'll probably be done in five minutes. Next you find one of the dozen or so remaining cars that didn't have ribbon on it to begin with and you plaster the ones you stole all over it. Cover every conceivable inch of the car with magnetic yellow, pink, red, white and blue. Then you discreetly set up a video camera somewhere and record the driver's reaction when he returns to his car.
If you were ballsy enough you'd do this prank several times under the guise of "human nature research." On your first outing, paste all the ribbons on a really crappy looking car. On subsequent visits, plaster them on cars from all other economic stations of life: a BMW, a mini-van, an SUV. See what kinds of different reactions you get from people in different walks of life. Do they flip out? Do they laugh? Do they try to take the ribbons off or just leave them? If they do take them off, where do they put them? Do they leave them in a pile in their parking spot or return them to the lost and found desk in the store? The possible control/variable experiments are endless. Try it on people with Kerry/Edwards and Bush/Cheney stickers. Try it on cars that have Christian fish emblems and cars that have gay pride rainbow stickers. Put them on Hummers and on cars with handicap plates.
I'd never have the balls to actually try this experiment and mind you, I'm a Christian so I couldn't in good conscience recommend that anybody else actually try it seeing as how it involves theft and all that. So I am in no way encouraging anybody reading this to actually go out and do this. It's just something funny to think about.
…Though if anybody does feel compelled to attempt what I've just described, please email me and I'll give a mailing address where you can send the tape.
In light of the dog day heat and humidity we've been experiencing here the last couple weeks, this week's column is all about a fact of life I know all too well: sweating.
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The
diverse number of topics on this site ends up drawing people from all
over the place using any number of random Google searches. I've gotten
feedback of all kinds, some people telling me I'm a big dork, others telling
me I'm funny and entertaining and even a few people who tell me I've inspired
them in some way. This week I got my favorite email about this site ever.
The email came from Linda Clover, "the caretaker of the World's Largest
Ball of Twine" in Cawker City, Kansas. Lauren and I stopped through
Cawker City during the first
week of our road trip and fell in love with the place. While there we
met Linda and had a great conversation. We also met Lottie Herod who runs
the only store in town where you can buy Ball of Twine paraphernalia.
Apparently Linda too has discovered Hey Guess What and she passed along
my site to Lottie as well. She said the two of them thoroughly enjoyed
my appraisal of their little town.
Those
of you who have read the Road Trip may also
remember that I was unable to find a World's Largest Ball of Twine shotglass
at Lottie's shop to add to my collection and had to settle for a Ball
of Twine toothpick holder. Well Linda has informed me that Lottie now
carries shotglasses and will gladly send me one as soon as I give her
my address. I intend to write Lottie (who "doesn't do email"
according to Linda) a letter as soon as possible and thank her personally
for being such a wonderful part of our road trip.
There are new quotes in my "Throwaway Movie Lines" list. Check 'em out.
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My
recent blog about St.
Louis hadn't been up for more than a few days when the angry emails
started pouring in, making it the most responded to posting on this site
ever. Insult somebody's city and they come after you with a vengeance.
The letters ranged from apologetic to downright nasty and I was accused
of everything from racism to poor grammar… I'm not sure which one
I take more offense to. Most of the people who wrote me seemed to think I was some scaredy-cat white boy who was just afraid of a city. To that I just want to say that in my life I have lived in, worked in, traveled to and spent time in over twenty major cities. So my appraisal of St. Louis is not entirely without some degree of merit or basis of comparison. Very few of the cities I have been privy to made me feel as gloomy, annoyed and just plain scared for my life as did St. Louis. That being said, I do recognize that until one has lived in a city and been immersed in its culture, it's impossible to truly know it. So, I will make this offer to anybody who took my negative words to heart. If you truly believe I was wrong, write me and tell me why. Please keep it civil and to the point. I won't use this as a springboard to bust on you or use it as further ammunition in my assault on your city. I will simply post your response at the end of my St. Louis blog entry.
I have a new section on the site. The LISTS page. A motley chronicle of anything and everything that happen to strike me at any given time, updated constantly and full of diverse topics. Of course, right now, there are only two lists to pick from so the diversity is rather lacking, but eventually that statement will be true. In addition to the Miscellaneous Thoughts Archive, I have posted a list of "Great Throwaway Movie Lines" for your enjoyment.
I'm going to try and update this site more often than I have been. At the very least, I intend to update the What's New page, blog style, every week or so, just to keep you abreast of what's happening and talk about the random stupid things I'm thinking about that aren't long enough to warrant one of my traditional novella-sized blogs. So check here often, and if you miss a week, don't forget to check out the archives.
