THE HILLBILLY SHOW SATURDAY NIGHT

l to r, bruce molsky, charlie edwards, bill dancy

 

The Hillbilly Show happened Saturday night, a comedy and variety show, this year the 21st annual, local people entertaining local people. The Hillbilly Show is a fundraiser for the Alleghany Planning Committee, a branch of the Blue Ridge Opportunity Commission headquartered in Wilkes County. The money raised from admission goes to people in the county having a hard time. They give three $500 scholarships to high school graduates of slim circumstances. They pay electric and heating fuel bills for people at risk of losing their power unable to pay the bill. They give garden seeds to several people a year, seeds of the individual's choice. They arrange house repairs for people who can't afford to pay for the repairs. They buy books for the Head Start daycare center in town. No money is skimmed off for any reason. The money is carefully accounted for. All that is taken in is used for its stated purpose. It appears that more money goes out than comes in from the Hillbilly Show. Donations help too. It is a group of modest people, about a dozen, who believe helping the poor an important aspect of being a member of a community. These are people who answer yes to the question, Am I my brother's keeper? It does not diminish anything for anybody in the group to help somebody having a rough time. I have seen by observation and experience the one word that describes best the natives of Alleghany County is generosity.

 

dr roger arias

 

bruce molsky

 

Dr Roger Arias opened the show playing America on classical guitar.  He later played two classical pieces for guitar. He was good. The man could pick. Flowers were thrown onto the stage while he played. I believe the flowers were part of the show. The audience applauded him as enthusiastically as they applauded the country music and bluegrass. This week's Alleghany News mentioned the Hillbilly Show briefly in an article about different events going on in the county this fall color weekend like high school homecoming, a studio tour of the different craft studios in the county. The article introduced the Hillbilly Show thus, "As sophisticated as the studio art may be, Saturday night's Hillbilly Comedy and Variety Show is anything but." Two seats reserved for the press were empty. It struck me somewhat irresponsible of the editor to dismiss the Hillbilly Show so succinctly. I suppose classical music is not sophisticated either. Maybe he was thinking of Meatloaf for sophisticated.

 

the alleghany golden girls

 

the jubilee line dancers

 

Seems to me a responsible local paper might at least acknowledge an important charity in the county of all local people helping out local people, and raising money by way of an annual laugh for the community. It's about the only thing happening in Sparta not high school sports. I suspect unsophisticated has to do with the Hillbilly Show being working class humor that's not quite sophisticated enough for the middle class. Not near as good as television. The music is more of interest to the working class, the mountain people, country, bluegrass, old-time, than to the exurban middle class. Therefore, hardly worthy of notice to an editor who believes only the middle class is literate. Some of the better musicians in the county play at the Hillbilly Show. This year, Tim Lewis picked his banjo. Tim can pick some bluegrass. Charlie Edwards was picking his rhythm guitar and singing. Bill Dancy picked his banjo. Bill Joines picked guitar. Guest artist Bruce Molsky played fiddle, guitar and sang with the band of respectable local musicians.  

 







dottie dorsett the backstage director in red with gary joines

 

judy rimes and

patrick buchannan

sing sonny & cher

 

My role is to pull the ropes that open and close the curtains. I used to try to help out moving mics around backstage, but it messed me up with the curtains. They take some focus. Dottie, pictured above, signals to me and I have a program she marked with open and close throughout the show. It might be almost ten years I've been with the Planning Committee. It appears to me the Hillbilly Show is better each year. Last year and this year the back stage part was handled the best ever. Onstage flowed seamlessly. I like about my place that I can see what's going on backstage, what's happening on stage, and the audience. Like a good Taoist, I participate by not participating. First couple years with them I learned I don't have it for the stage. The stage is not the place for me. This show had nothing but good music throughout, good dancing, good singing, new sound system and lighting. I felt like it was an excellent show that connected with the audience well. The audience was with what was happening on stage from start to finish. Hillbilly Wes, an MC, kept the spirit lively and the audience laughing at his zany humor.

 

cheri choate's band

 

the house band with bruce molsky

 

 

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SOPHIA'S FIRST VET EXPERIENCE

sophia 6 weeks old

Thursday morning Sophia went for her first ride to see the doctor. She was remarkably calm, possibly for it being her first time. None of my cats or dogs in the past liked going to the vet. After returning home, Sophia took a nap on top of the cat carrier. Cats in the past would not go near the carrier after a trip to the vet. Sophia felt relaxed, even when a needle stuck her. I suspect whatever was in the shot made her drowsy. An hour or so after we arrived home she slept for two hours. We return in three weeks for first rabies shot. She did not seem to be out of sorts during the visit or after. At home, she was her usual playful self. Stopped at the grocery store on the way back for catfood and a package of carrots for donkeys. Sophia seemed a bit anxious when I returned from the grocery store after sitting in the car alone for twenty minutes. She meowed grown-up cat style when I opened the back door to put groceries on the seat. 

 

kitten in the cat chute

 

This my first car after years of pickups, the back seat amounts to an enclosed pickup bed. I don't haul wood anymore or do anything else that needs a pickup. What I do haul fits easily on the back seat. I even keep a plastic snow shovel in the back seat and a rolled up sleeping bag. I keep the battery charger on the floor in back. The car has some odd electrical leak I can neither find nor predict. I'll go out one morning in winter and the battery will be stone dead. This means calling a neighbor to ask for a jump start or to borrow a charger. Last time it happened, I bought a new charger. It goes with the car now like a jack and a spare tire. Found one that charges the battery in a matter of hours on sale for the same price as one that takes all day and all night. At the moment, the fifty foot orange extension cord lay extended on the ground between house and car, unplugged at both ends, for next time. I hesitate to put it up, expecting it to be needed every time I turn the key to start the car. I keep it coiled in a five-gallon bucket. No matter how carefully I coil the cord, uncoiling it amounts to untying knots in it, over and over, knots within knots. I would never trust a parachute that I packed.

 

Sophia's zebra legs

 

The vet's office sits at the bottom of Twin Oaks Mountain on Hwy 21 at Twin Oaks Gap. The road is a long downhill run in the gap. An air current flows through the gap. Main Street in Sparta is in the channel of air flow through Twin Oaks Gap. Sparta was originally Gap Civil. Another Gap. When the wind is blowing hard, the buildings along Main Street (Hwy 21)  make a canyon. A decade or so ago, the Sparta Revitalization Committee, volunteers, wanted to take out the center turning lane at the stoplight and plant it with ornamental trees. It would take a native maple to withstand the winds that rage through there. They would never plant a native tree. One without a price tag has no value. They were not going to do anything and they have not. Driving to the vet's office in the past with a dog, every dog I had started trembling at the top of the hill at Twin Oaks Gap. The scent of the office traveled up the hill through the gap. Every time, the dog trembled all the way down the long hill to the parking space. Cats of the past cried all the way to the vet and lay in the carrier traumatized all the way home.

 

Sophia's stripes

 

I'm curious to see how Sophia responds second and third times. I'm thinking about making a space to keep the carrier with door open and a cushion inside, make it a familiar, comfortable place. As it is, it takes up space and has no practical value at home. I'll do that. I see other people at the vet with dogs that don't seem to have a problem with the place. Mine always trembled while we sat in the waiting area. The hallway to the examining room takes a turn to the right and a turn to the left in a short space, then a left turn into the door. Nash Williams, the vet at the time, told me that a lot of people going out the door of the examining room turn left when the way out is to the right. He said no dog ever made that mistake. They all turn right. Sophia was curious about what was happening to her. She seemed comfortable with the female vet. Her mother was adopted from their office's ongoing selection of cats needing humans. The vet remembered Sophia's mother. Sophia is in good health, weighs 2.8 pounds, just right for her age. 

 

 

photos by tj worthington

 

 

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A MOUNTAIN COUNTY SHERIFF

 

 

Earlier in the week with my BROC group, we had lunch and our monthly meeting at the new Mexican restaurant in town, La Fuente, in the old KFC building vacated a few years ago. I liked the feeling in the place. The walls were hand-painted with Mexican landscapes, the colors of the walls and furniture comfortable suggesting Mexico. The food was good Tex-Mex and, to my delight, not buried in cheese. The waitresses were attentive and friendly. I declared it a good feeling place and went there with my friends Lucas and Judy from Atlanta for dinner last night. We had good meals, comfortable surroundings, the people in there people I feel at home among. Highway 21 was the scene out the windows, cars and pickups passing by, yet the restaurant felt like such an enclosed atmosphere the scenes in the windows were detached from the reality inside as if they were huge flat-screen tvs showing traffic. No story to follow, tv with sound muted. Eye candy. The television set was over by the bar, the best place for it, since we can't have restaurants without televisions.

 

 

 

While in there Monday for the meeting, I saw sheriff and some deputies come in and occupy a booth. All familiar faces, friendly, good people, law enforcement the chosen contribution to their community. Seeing them together reminded me of something I already know and seldom think about. The news over the last years and social media are stressing cops killing unarmed black people all over the country, bullying by police, I felt my own attitude had become jaundiced by something that has nothing to do with where I live. And just as quickly as it came to mind, I saw familiar faces of men I know to be good people who do not harass anybody or beat up pregnant women. I knew a few relatives of some of them, good people. I said to self, I already know they are not what the publicity by way of media in urban situations makes them out to be. Kind of like the way a dog shakes its head when it comes in from outside, changing from wild mind to indoors with the humans mind. Or in my case changing from monkey mind to rational mind. I was thinking Alleghany's law enforcement is not anything like law enforcement in the urban press, nor has it ever been even close.

 

 

 

Thinking of the present sheriff and the one before him, even the one before him and the one before him and the one before him, good people I believed had service to the community their intent. Even when  a scandal erupted, as it did a few times, very few, the intent to serve was the same. Scandals only have to do with money and most of us are irrational about money, so I tend not to see any blame in a scandal. Take our present sheriff, Bryan Maines. I know him a familiar face over a lot of years by name and he knows me by name, he knows people I know and I know people he knows, I know him by his reputation and he knows me by mine. Though we've only met a few times, face to face we start off already acquainted. You don't have to know Bryan well to see that this is a man with a good heart, the kind of heart you want in a sheriff, neighbor or anybody you know. I can say the same of every sheriff in my time in Alleghany. We have different opinions about the different ones, but I maintain they were all good-hearted people with intent to  help keep mayhem at bay so the rest of us, their community, can live peaceable lives if that's what we want. The objections I've heard over the years about sheriffs and deputies had to do with personality characteristics. We all, every one of us, have characteristics in our personalities that piss other people off, most of the time not enough to cause a reaction. Except when you hold public office.

 

 

There was one sheriff whose integrity I questioned until a day I saw him in action. I was at a friend's house attempting to convince him that blowing his head off might be painless for him, but it would pain the hearts of everyone dear to him the rest of their lives. His wife-replacement girlfriend called the sheriff for help. Mike came in the door to see someone he'd known most of his life, knew his personality, his temperament, his extended family, his record, his reputation, somebody he knew. Mike sat down at the kitchen table with him friend-to-friend and said he'd seen fifty-nine dead bodies, wishing he'd never seen the first one, adding he remembered them all. Mike said, "I don't want you to be number sixty." Then it came up friend had already taken a whole container of girlfriend's pills he believed were pain pills. He was dying as we spoke. Girlfriend flew into emergency mode like call the rescue squad. She picked up the empty container to see what pills he swallowed. Prosac. He'd taken the wrong ones out of her medicine cabinet. Started with a P and was unpronounceable, must have been deadly. Thanks for dropping by, Mike, good seein ya.

 

 

photos by tj worthington

 

 

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THE KITTEN AND THE KEYBOARD

 

 

The windows are full of yellow light today, a carpet of yellow leaves on the ground glowing in direct sunlight with shadows of tree limbs running through it like cracks. The reflection of sunlight on the yellow leaves in the trees as well as on the ground gives the impression the air itself has a golden glow. Inside, a young cat curled up in the crook of my right arm on the desktop, kitten energy full of play having a time-out, purrs when I touch her, wants to nap in the hammock of my arms. She understands that I need hands free, yet she needs to be held too. I hold her in my arms a few minutes and use the keyboard a few minutes. As kitten learns my ways and I learn her ways, we will find our flow before long. She is already good after three weeks with staying off the keyboard. It's become almost automatic for her. I've attempted to steer her away from it, the way a mother cat would, without scolding or acting impatient. My feeling is that if I were to be forceful with her and threatening, I would unconsciously turn the keyboard into a taboo, irresistible to cat for life. I'm seeing that gently steering her away from the keyboard has made walking on it largely uninteresting to her. Sometimes she breaks out of her self-control and steps on it. I gently steer her away and she goes without resistance.

 

 

 

All my pets, one at a time over the last forty years, have taught me that gentleness is their nature already. They are made ungentle by rough people. I used to know somebody with a dog that was a cross between an Australian blue heeler and a border collie. It was a vicious, sneakin-bitin dog, a difficult dog to get past from car door to house door, even when it knew me. Somebody else I knew had a heeler crossed with a border collie. It, too, was a sneakin-bitin dog, but it didn't threaten me after it came to know me. There was no getting to know the first one. Both dogs were brought up ungently, made mean by men who want a mean dog. I raised my dogs with gentleness and their natural gentle spirit came through. I believe we  humans are at heart gentle, though growing up and living in so-called civilization makes us tough in order to survive. Men who have been in wars, especially, tend to be rough on their kids in the belief that treating kids like shit makes them tough. In my own experience, I've seen that hitting kids only makes them angry, an anger they hold all their lives believing it's natural.

 

 

 

An image popped into my mind's eye of a guy I saw in the grocery store several years ago, a tormented soul in a body bent over for protection, anger seething from his whole body visibly, back arched, head down. My mind said, don't go down that aisle right now. He looked like somebody extremely volatile and maybe just out of prison or another dehumanizing institution. I kicked myself mentally for avoiding somebody who is not going to attack me in a grocery store for walking by, turned the buggy down the aisle and when I passed him, he looked up at me with eyes gentle as a three year old's. My heart broke into tears. I felt an impulse to give him a big hug and say, It's all right, you're safe. He would have freaked out and I would have too. Like my aunt said, if you don't want it started, don't start it. I spoke in passing, hey, a small way of saying, You're ok, you'll make it. Tears come to my eyes now remembering this guy who was a human version of a dog with it's tail between its legs, humped over from fear. It was a moment I thought, there but for the grace of God go I, not saying it to remind self, rather because it's full meaning came through first and suggested it. First thought at the time would have been something like, it could so easily have been me.

 

 

 

Perhaps he was unable to find such indifference in himself as I had access to in myself. From age ten I regarded self a foster child. Indifference kicked in, became an invisible protective shield like Colgate toothpaste on Happy Tooth. Eventually, I came to realize that my own original nature was gentle and wanted to be treated gently. Every time in my adult life I've brought home a young dog or cat, it seemed obvious they were gentle in spirit. Kittens playing look like they are shredding each other and neither one gets a scratch. They learn playing how hard you can bite the other without it hurting. When it hurts, the other squeals and the one biting lets go. Kitten will never bite that hard again, until she means it. I've been training Sophia with a yelp when she climbs my legs. A couple weeks ago she had so little weight her claws poking through the sweatpants material merely tickled my legs. She has grown so much her claws hurt now. I yelp and she lets go. Most of the time. She has recently gone from climbing to my knee to jumping to my knee in a flying squirrel leap. The claws take hold when she lands, the material stretched  tight and thin, it makes me about stand straight up. I don't have to scold. Only saying it hurts is all she needs to know. Hurting is not her intent. If I were to be hurting her by pushing her off the desk, being abruptly irrational, she'd get me back. Cats are instant karma. They give back how we treat them, even plot revenge. I treat Sophia with love and grace and receive the same in turn.     

 

 

photos by tj worthington

 

 

 

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