THE END OF A NEVER-ENDING PROJECT

eula rae cook, mary jane ciraco, linda edwards, the golden girls

My blues over the last two months are fading. The sample dvd of the Hillbilly Show, in October, arrived in the mail today. Next step: email approval back to the people making the dvd. Done. Next, wait for the box to arrive with the dvds in it ready to go. When the box arrives, I'll pick one randomly to put in the dvd player to see if it took. Only then will I be satisfied this never-ending project is over. Two months of frustration to the max. I know the ones who put it onto disc are happy to be done with it, probably happier than I am. They were patient with me. My patience broke at a certain point, but it came back. I pitched a fit over something that was my doing. LOL. Not funny then. My gratitude is heightened by their patience with my ignorance. It started with me taking on a project I believed I could handle. Another one of those learnings of our own limitations. They're good to know. They make boundaries. I know not to cross that line again. The other side of the line was where I took the first step, deciding to make video of the Hillbilly Show. I've made video of so many old-time bands, bluegrass bands, rock bands that I felt like I had enough experience making videos of musicians making music. For what I had in mind to approach the project, I needed somebody to operate a second camera, to take turns with video and making still pictures. I hadn't yet talked with Crystal about helping me out--she's a studio photographer--when I was told by another, "You don't need to get somebody. I'll be with you the whole show. I got a new video camera. It'll be fun to use it." Error number one, not asking Crystal for help anyway. I know I can count on Crystal.  

david nichols guitar and joe irwin

At the beginning of the show, promised helper never turned up. I was stuck with self and two cameras, one for video, one for stills. It's not easy doing both at once. It's even beyond difficult. The pictures here were taken the night before at rehearsal. It took some powerful self-control to put my rage aside so it would affect camera wielding the least for the next three hours. Later, when I saw promised helper, I was told, "I hadta...I hadta...had so much stuff to do." I had to shift mind into hyper-drive, a mind that doesn't even have over-drive anymore. The beginning of a two-month long downhill roller coaster run on a ride of emotion. I talked by phone with one of the people who makes the dvd. We had good, clear conversation of understanding both ways. He suggested emailing the video to their computers. I spent a week attempting to email them at 57 hours a try. The upload jumped track after about 38 hours, every time. I could not use the computer during uploading. When the upload gave out, I set it in motion again. For a week. This step contributed to the blues a very great deal. Another talk on the phone. He suggested I break it up into several short sections and email them by some shrink process I had to write down instructions to follow. Couldn't even do that. Took laptop to Crystal. She figured out the process and set up several packages to send. I brought laptop home and sent them off. They went through, but the place didn't receive good enough quality from the transfer to use. Thanksgiving vacation came and went. I waited a couple weeks. Asked what was up. Oh, it fell through the cracks over Thanksgiving. When they returned they'd forgotten about it, which I took for totally understandable. They operate in big volume. This redneck on the phone that don't know nothin about digital anything was taking up an awful lot of attention and time for something they probably will not even make expenses on. Why wouldn't they forget it?

dr jack cahn, mississippi sawyer

Next, they asked me to send the chips from the cameras. Unconsciously, I sent one, not thinking to send the other. They processed it and sent the sample. It was missing everything on the second chip I'd failed to send. Email again. In my mind, I was blaming them. It turned out I was the one messing things up. Sent the second chip a week ago and the sample arrived in today's mail. The sample disc was the only thing in the mailbox. It was almost a joy to see it, but I reminded self, haven't seen it yet. Carried it into the house in a guarded happy condition. Don't be setting off fireworks yet. I slipped it into the dvd player and ran through the whole show to check out sequences on fast-forward. Stopped it a few times to listen to how the sound took. All the way to the end it looked good. I called Agnes and left a message on her phone the sample is good and I've emailed the go-ahead. Not in time for Thanksgiving, not in time for Christmas, not in time for New Year's, maybe in time for Valentine's Day. Gotta be. Like Agnes reminded me a month ago, everything works out for the best. I walked to the mailbox after the mail carrier's car passed, suspecting the sample might be there today, but without hope. Hope died over a month ago that this never-ending project might someday end. These last weeks I've abandoned hope. Even after I emailed the go-ahead, I still don't feel satisfaction it's done. I've lost concern that it may never end, and lost concern that it might come to completion eventually. I did not want to write about it through the course of the process. Now that it's close to over, if the light at the end of the tunnel is not the light of an oncoming train, I can let it all out, only one future unknowable left. It's almost a joy to see this crazy-making time just a few days from finished. The end in sight is not the end.

lynn worth, moon over sparta

At last, I feel free of the burden, a lesser version of how the god Prometheus felt when he was unbound from the rock he was chained to for eternity by order of Zeus, his brother. It's not quite that kind of release. The end of a long frustration is more a release like setting a dog free that's been chained for two months. It's like a cluster of helium-filled balloons of different sizes and colors let go at the same time. Cares and troubles sail away to tiny specks in the sky, then nothing. As of today, only one is still a visible pixel. This part almost over, next part starts now. I've been aiming to write an article for Old-Time Herald magazine on the Hillbilly Show, this year its twentieth annual. I've been so out of heart over the project, I'd put writing about it on the shelf of maybe I will / maybe I won't. My mood was so dark over this project, I could not have written an essay from that mental dungeon the project put me in. I feel now like a submarine surfacing. I can breathe. It's all over now Baby Blue. I feel so good around this dvd and the Hillbilly Show experience, now that it's done, the original intent to write about it came up first thing. I will sit with the dvd and watch it all the way through as a memory aid. The one thing I can say to the good of what I see in the video is emphasis on the people involved, very personal emphasis. Some of the video is bad and some is good. Mostly, it wavers in between. I told Agnes when anybody complains about one thing or another being wrong with it, just say, "TJ done it." All that's bad about it is my doing. The people who put it on disc did a beautiful job. 

bobbie and gary parlier, tennessee waltz

*

     

  

THE CIRCLE OF THE HEART

agnes

 

Pictured here is Agnes Joines, head knocker of our BROC group. That's Blue Ridge Opportunity Commission. BROC is involved with three counties, Wilkes, Ashe and Alleghany. Our branch is the Alleghany Planning Committee. Unfortunately, the county government started a totally unrelated committee called the Alleghany Planning Commission. It seems to me pointless to go on keeping the name we have, because it has been rendered meaningless. Commission or committee, which is it? Whichever. The group is partial to the name, because we've always used it and we had it first. It never meant much of anything before; we don't advertise, self-promote or appeal for money. Not high profile. The lowest of profiles. Stacy, our "secretary" (the S-word in the ABCs of forbidden words---I don't know of another word for her position---office person?), investigates sources for operating money, grants and such, and she helps the people who come through the door seeking assistance, like needing an electric bill paid in the winter when usage triples, firewood, needing repairs on a house, like replacing a window, fixing a leaking roof, and whatever else the need. This is among the poorest counties in the state. North Carolina has never been known for a money state. Our present republican government is consciously pushing the citizens of the state deeper in Depression, supplementing the national government's intent. I didn't realize the extent of poverty in the county until involvement with BROC. I prefer to call it BROC; it's easy to remember and specific to what it is. I, myself, am unable to remember if it is commission or committee. At the same time, I really don't care what it's called. What we do is my reason for being there.  

 

 

stacy

 

Stacy is one of my favorite people in my world. This picture doesn't show her face well, but her attitude comes through clearly. Stacy has a brilliant mind, she just doesn't know it yet. She's on her way, though. Ten more years and she'll be blowing her own mind. She'll be saying, Ten years ago I wouldn't have dreamed I'd be where I am now. I don't think it's exaggeration. Stacy is serious. I mean serious. She is of a mind that life is serious. She takes it seriously. In fun, I have called her Stasi, which is all the more fun because she knows what it is, East German secret police, and doesn't hold it against me as an insult. From my perspective, it's a compliment, because I know she knows what it means, and it wouldn't be any fun if she didn't know what it meant. It's not even teasing. It's playing with words, linguistic humor, among my favorite kinds of humor. I only called her Stasi once; more than once it's boring. I can talk about things with Stacy I can't talk with the others about. Like today, I told her I'd just learned last week that all of Russia from the Ural Mountains eastward is Siberia. I'd believed Siberia was a section in the northeastern part of the country. It's the name of Asian Russia. She said she'd recently learned it, too, and told me about a globe her grandmother has with names of countries she'd never heard of. We do not ever talk politics for reasons we both understand. If we did, we would not talk at all. That's how I like to be with everybody I know. Put that old absolutist mind in gear and look out. I know so few people who agree with me politically that I can't talk political nonsense with anybody. How blessed is that? I like to dwell in the color zone between the extremes of black and white. In light, black is absence of colors and white is all colors. In pigment, black is all colors and white is absence of color. It's the rainbow in between. And light is particles that travel in waves.

 

ernest

 

Ernest is Agnes's husband of sixty years. They've been in love since school. Ernest is fresh out of a very long stay in the hospital, where Agnes said he like-to died twice. Agnes is a refreshing spirit! Ernest is 81 and did not look over 65 before the hospital stay. Today he was slow. Today I saw him look his age for the first time. It doesn't feel right seeing Ernest so bereft of his spirit. He plays bluegrass mandolin primarily, banjo, guitar, and bass. He plays old-time and country too, and sings. Agnes is a good singer of the old songs. In my early years in the mountains, they made an LP together singing hymns with preacher Earl Baker. Baker was the step-son of Henry Whitter, guitar picker of old-time music of the 1920s and 30s, of Grayson & Whitter (GB Grayson played old-time fiddle--has the name the best there ever was--and Henry Whitter did some singing). Henry Whitter spent his later years in Whitehead, just down the road. Earl Baker's daughter gave Whitter's guitar to the Blue Ridge Music Center. I don't usually get a kick out of things like Jimi Hendrix's guitar or even Carter Stanley's guitar, but when I saw Henry Whitter's guitar in its Plexiglas case on the wall, I felt it was something special. I can't explain why. I just felt it. Ernest Joines plays mandolin in the local bluegrass dance band, The Rise & Shine Band. They are the house band at the square-dance place, The Alleghany Jubilee on Main Street. It is the only place in Sparta anything is happening. Tuesday and Friday nights Main Street in front of the Jubilee is loaded with parked cars. Ernest and Agnes ran the Jubilee until Ernest fell into the hospital. A new couple have taken it over who have the personality for it like Ernest and Agnes do. They are part of our group, too, Jack and Linda Joines, but couldn't make it today. Agnes looked tired and drawn from half a year of stress. Having her Ernie back is everything to her now. Nobody in this world could have more loving care than Ernest.

 

 ted, ernest, agnes, stacy, helen

 

It's Agnes's love that pulled him through. She thanked everybody for the prayers today. She said it's a miracle and she just wanted to give God the praise he was due. And that was it. No sermon, nothing political about Christian, no self-congratulations for going to church. This attitude is in the spirit of our group. We are about helping people having a hard time at helping themselves in an indifferent economy. We don't pat ourselves on the back for being righteous. Every one of us is one who  believes the poor need help. We are people who believe Jesus had reason for recommending we help the poor. Churches that praise themselves for being Christian seldom do. We are not church affiliated. Individually, we all have our lives and can't do a whole lot. But together as a small group with clarity of intent we get quite a lot covered. Our fundraising event of the year is the Hillbilly Show in the school auditorium. It's a hometown stage version of the tv show HEE HAW, five dollars a ticket. In my Flatland years I hated it. When I moved to the mountains I watched it every week with neighbor Tom Pruitt and learned to love it. It is a very different perspective seeing it from inside hillbilly culture. The Hillbilly Show amounts to comedy skits absurd to ridiculous, and bluegrass, country and old-time music played by local musicians. I think of it as Dada theater. We couldn't put the show on last year due to Ernest in dire straits and Agnes stressed. Agnes is the director of the show. This year we're a whole lot behind and concerned. The local electric co-op came through with a great assist. Everything's gonna be all right. We have our Ernie back. I wanted to introduce you to everybody, but am running out of space. If you don't mind I'll take a little more space for you to meet Gary and Jean.  

 

 

gary

  

Gary Joines, pictured above, is a Marine, retired bank branch manager, fiddler, guitar and bass player, and he's Ernest's cousin. He plays bass in The Rise & Shine Band. A Marine fiddler seems like an oxymoron, but Gary is no kind of moron. He's a humble man with a wide range of talent. He's good at making a living in this world and he's an active artist. Ted Dorsett is here from Winston-Salem. He has a couple of donkeys too. Jean Osborne, pictured below, is the daughter of country singer Del Reeves' brother, Homer. Del Reeves is from here. Just about everybody in the county named Reeves is kin to him to some degree. His full name is Franklin Delano Reeves. Reckon they was democrats? Jean is a woman of a beautiful heart and soul. When I'm around Jean I see (feel) the brilliant light of a woman of true compassion, one who cares deeply. I don't know if that's how she sees herself. She's too humble to have such lofty beliefs about herself. A Jean moment popped into mind. In the time I was looking up titles of land transfers for a lawyer's office, Jean was doing same for another lawyer. I was in the vault at the register of deeds, and Jane, a woman doing same work for another lawyer, was in there. Jane is someone with a sense of humor all her own and she gives you nothing to go by whether it was a knife or fun. You're on your own to make it what you want it to be. Jane doesn't care. Jean came walking through the door, saw Jane first and said, "How you doin, Jane?" Jane replied without looking up from her work, "Me and TJ was doin just fine til you walked in." Jean stopped like Jane had cocked a gun in her face, thought better of it, knowing Jane, and proceeded, smiling forgiveness. They started talking freely. Jane counted on Jean to get the humor and she did. I can't leave out Helen Crouse. Helen took care of her husband in a long, slow decline after a debilitating stroke. Helen has a bright spirit too. I tend to like to sit next to Helen; she's a light-hearted refreshing spirit. I'm honored to have a place among these people.

 

jean and helen

 

*

 

 

A DAY IN SPARTA

anthony gormley, field, 1991

(I've seen this--they all have faces and they're looking at you)

This was a good day to feel the love for the people of Alleghany County. It started in the coffee shop where this great big feller said, "I'm glad I don't fly." I saw in my mind's eye him flying over like a buzzard and shitting, hoping he was not over me when he did it. I said, "So am I." He didn't know what I meant, and doesn't think enough of me to care what I meant. Fact is, I said it because I knew he didn't care what I meant. He went on talking like I hadn't said anything, like I knew he would. He brings to mind a cousin I grew up with, big man, drives a dump truck, smokes a cigar and can't help but sound like everything he says is bragging. It's a form of ego. But I don't care about that as anything but an identifying set of characteristics. We all operate from ego, some of us do it with a little more finesse than others and some of us are all-out bragging all the time. I've even come to the place where I see language as infinitely complex possibilities for saying, "I want." I've come to believe that's all we ever say when we speak. The Australian Aborigines, before they were slaughtered and subdued, forced into a mold of white-man culture with no place in the culture, said the Creator gave us our voices for singing praises, not for talking. Isn't it so,when all we essentially say is I want. Seems like the best thing would be to say I want one time and then be silent for the rest of one's life. No, we have to say it over and over. "Look at that yellow Camaro with the black stripes on the hood and top!"

Met some people from California, here visiting Mitzi Biggins, an interesting couple from rural northern California, which they said is not so very different from here socially, just uniquely its own culture, like here is its own culture. I was sorry I had to leave once we set to talking. I had the BROC meeting at noon. This happens every time I go into the coffee shop in the morning before lunch with my BROC friends. I set twenty minutes to twelve as the time to leave, quarter til if I'm enjoying conversation. I never leave at twenty minutes til. I twist and squirm inside for five minutes wishing I could stay longer, then have to head out the door. It didn't come to me until later, but when Elgin Hatch, the PhD from California who studied white people, came to my house to interview me in his study of Sparta, he told me before he opened the car door I belong in northern California. Northern California is loaded with people just like me. He affirmed it even more adamantly when he entered the house. Here in the coffee shop was one of my neighbors in spirit, first one I'd ever met.

Then to the Kanpai restaurant, the new Japanese restaurant in town that is slowly catching on. It was strange getting a fortune cookie with a Chinese message in it. China and Japan are not allies. Who cares about that in pop culture? The young Japanese (or Chinese?) waiter came here from New York. He's been here about a year and doesn't get Sparta people at all. He's about like I'd be working at an American restaurant in Tokyo. Though I would want to explore and learn the culture. He's not curious about Sparta people in any way. I said to him, "I see so many Japanese movies that when I come in here I feel like I'm in a Japanese movie." He gave me the ah-so look that says I don't understand what you said, but want you to think I do. He said, "Thank you." In Sparta. We have a Chinese restaurant with Chinese people here from New York. We have four Mexican restaurants with Mexicans from Mexico running them. The one the Anglos go to is American Mexican slathered with cheese and brown bean mush. The other three are for the Mexican community, where you find the actual Mexican food, and where only a few Anglos go, the ones unafraid of being seen with the wrong class of people. Since the Sparta Restaurant went out of business more than 20 years ago, there has not been an American restaurant in Sparta that could make it. Northside and Southside diners have been gone several years. The Anglos are in a Depression and the Mexicans are working steady.

We had our BROC meeting waiting for the meal. It was a lively meeting, as usual, with Agnes Joines the head knocker. Agnes is so full of the life spirit she holds everyone's attention while she's talking. She'll interrupt two of the men she sees talking while she's presiding and tell them to pay attention. It's like a friendly family, a family where nobody quarrels. In that way, I'd say Agnes and Ernest more than likely made a happy family when they had kids in the house. When Agnes gets in your face quarreling, she's done when it's over. She's not in a huff refusing to speak for a day or two. It's never like that. She told me she got in Bob Bamberg's face earlier at the Chamber of Commerce. I know what it's like, she's done it to me. I saw Bob later in the library. I said, "I hear you had an Agnes experience." He said, "What do you mean?" I said, "Agnes Joines in your face." He broke out laughing, "Oh, Agnes!" It was one of two great honors of my life that I can think of when invited to join up with BROC, Blue Ridge Opportunity Commission. I sit at the big table of several smaller tables placed end-to-end with friends now of several years, people I respect as high as I can respect anybody. Every one of them is the kind of people I'm glad to have in my life. It warms my heart to be among them.

From the Kanpai I drove to the library to pick up the new painting of Jr I'd put in the library for a month. I wanted people who knew Jr to have a chance to see it. It's part of my ongoing campaign to keep his name alive in the memories of people who knew him. I told him some time before his mind went away that he will not be forgotten in his county. I spoke with Doug at the desk for awhile, waiting for the suicide bereavement meeting to be over. I went in after seeing Bob Bamberg come out, and saw Julia Simmons, Mrs Santa Claus, an English woman here from King, NC. She's light-hearted and lively, involved in this and that, very involved. Her husband plays Santa Claus in stores and around. She was doing something about how to deal with losing a loved one to suicide. I'm sure it would have been interesting, but I don't fall into that category. I've known people who have done it, but not close enough to give me trauma. I like Julia and we hugged. Norma Richardson was there. I gave her a hug for all she'd been through. What she has been through would take a big, long book to tell. I only know a teaspoon of the ocean of her life, but what little I know gives me a great big respect for the whole human being she is. Norma is one of the people in my world I hold way high up, and not unrealistically. Saw Kate Irwin on the way out, another woman I respect way up high, stopped and visited with her awhile. When I see Kate I feel tremendous respect.

On the way home I stopped next door to show Allan the painting of Jr. Wednesday is his day off. We visited a few minutes, talked about one thing and another. I came home and took a nap. Full day in just a few hours. Good feeling day all the way along. Sartre said hell is other people. I say heaven can be other people too.

  *

HILLBILLY SHOW PRACTICE NIGHT

bill and sonya joines

 

 

 

 

Friday night was Hillbilly Show practice night at the school auditorium. Bill and Sonya are the hosts as they have been for so many years I don't have the exact count. It's something like 15 or 16 years they've been the ones onstage in the rocking chairs talking between acts. I stay backstage and pull the ropes that work the curtains. I can see what's happening on the stage, what's going on backstage, and the audience. I have to pay close attention to Dottie the stage manager. She signals me for opening and closing. Inevitably, every show, somebody tells me with authority, "Close the curtains." I start them closing and Dottie gets frantic signing me to open them. I'm learning to pay attention only to Dottie for those instructions. It's a good time with everybody going through their performance, getting the sound right with George Sheets who operates the sound system very well. I like it because I get to see people I like to see but don't see very often.

 

 

Tonight it was Henry Thorne, 4th grade teacher to about everyone in the county, retired, appearing to play piano for the Red Hat Dancers. I saw Henry hobbling like an old man, and we're the same age. I said, "Are you all right, Henry?" He said he was. I said, "You're hobbling like an old man." He said, "I don't like getting old." He turned his right ear to me when I spoke. Evidently the other ear doesn't function. We talked about forgetfulness and people we know much older than us who have minds far clearer than ours. We talked about how wonderful heaven must be. Both of us have so many we cared about on the other side, we agreed we look forward to being with them again. Neither one of us expressed any desire to get really old, certainly not unto feeble. And we agreed neither of us is anxious to leave our friends here. We're in a kind of middle place, maybe something of a bridge. I had the impression it was Henry's first old-time music experience. After hearing Charlie Edwards play guitar and sing, Ernest Joines playing banjo and Gary Joines playing guitar, Henry said to me of Charlie, "Where did he learn to sing like that? He sounds like he went to school." I said he's a country boy who took it up, adding he played with a bluegrass band in Maryland when he worked in a factory there. Henry did not know mountain boys could make music so incredibly well. It kinda blew his mind.

 

 

The feature of the show for me was Cheri Choate singing an Emmy Lou Harris song, an extraordinarily beautiful song, and Cheri sang it right, not imitating Emmy Lou, but in her own style that sounds like she has many hours of stage experience. She said she hasn't played much on a stage, but from what I saw and heard, she has what it takes. She's doesn't back down from a great challenge, like singing an Emmy Lou Harris song and making it her own. I'd met her a few times before and knew she was involved in country music and songwriting. Seeing that she was to sing two Dotty West songs for the Saturday night show, I figured she'd be awfully good, but didn't dare expect what I heard. The only word I could come up with hearing her was that it was NICE, two syllables Southern style with enthusiasm. I include the delicacy that goes with the word nice. Nice like a lace wedding gown. Nice like Art Wooten's fiddle. Nice like Scott Freeman's mandolin. Grace is what it is I mean by nice. Cheri's grace singing is what I connected with. I noticed her small silver dragonfly earrings had the same grace she has in her singing. I took it the grace comes from within. Her singing put me into full appreciation.

 

 

I don't mean to leave off Bill Joines picking lead guitar with her. Bill did some almighty pickin. He's one of the better guitar pickers we have in the county. I won't call him the best, because if I did, he would tell me there's a dozen better. Not from false humility, but he'd mean what he was saying. Bill has played a lot of bluegrass onstage over his adult life. His dad, Paul Joines, picked guitar and sang too. Paul picked rhythm guitar with the Little River Boys in the 1950s, Cleve Andrews fiddle, Jr Maxwell banjo and Estal Bedsaul guitar. They never recorded, but they could pick some bluegrass music. Every one of them was an excellent musician. I painted the band about 5 years ago and it gave me satisfaction when Bill saw how I'd rendered his dad, Paul. Bill looked at it like he was seeing Paul again. The painting is in the county with John and Deborah Sherrill. Even better, it is in Whitehead. I didn't want that one to leave the county. Didn't want it to leave Whitehead, but thought that a little too restrictive to ask. Bill was a good friend with Jr Maxwell, too. Junior was my connection with Bill. Bill's present band is Alleghany Moon, an interesting band with its own sound. Bill's wife, Sonya was a dj at WCOK for several years, and she co-MCs the Sparta fiddlers convention with Harold Mitchell. Their daughter Taras is playing bass with Bill and Cheri in their performance.

 

 

Agnes Joines sang a song that got everybody going. Agnes is one of my favorite people in this world. She's somebody who can get in your face and let you have it and ten minutes later she's back to like there was never a problem. She's about the best I know of anybody who can get over something in almost the blink of an eye. I don't mean to say she doesn't sometimes struggle with it, but she gets there. Agnes is up and ready to go, to git-er-done. She makes everything she's involved in fun. You want something done, get Agnes to do it. It will get done. And done right. She's light-hearted and she's serious as it's called for. When it comes to getting down to business, Agnes is there. She's what I call real people. Ernest too. I'll never forget the time I heard Agnes, exasperated with Ernest, say, "I wish you'd get your head out of that music!" I thought: No you don't. Ernest only thinks music. Only. That's a big part of what she loves about him. Ernest without Agnes to keep his spring wound up would have a hard time getting by, because music is the only thing on his mind. When music is the only thing in your mind, you're not fit for much else. It's the music in Ernest that makes him who he is, the Ernest that everybody who knows him loves. Everything else passes him by. Ernest's art for the Hillbilly Show is picking a tenor banjo with a piano where they play as the the Dixie Dew Drops. Ernest made it work. It was beautiful. This is the performance that caused Henry Thorne to ask if they went to school to learn to play like that. Ernest played football in school.

 

 

*

 

 

THE IMPORTANCE OF MEETING ERNEST

mayor pro-tem agnes joines



Here is Agnes working the counter at Alleghany Cares Saturday, raising money for Alleghany Planning Committee's projects. After my spell of dread, it turned out to be a memorable and enjoyable day. We started it at the Pines for big buffet breakfast, the kind of breakfast we like around here; scrambled eggs, sausage, bacon, grits, biscuit, coffee, butter, jelly, all the good stuff. I think there were 10 of us around three tables put together to make one long table. An hour and a half together at the table we talked with animation, conversationally even, the ones not talking actually paying attention to the one talking, whoever it was, whatever was said. This is something I didn't know I liked so much about our team until just now when the sentence wrote itself. We actually talk with each other. What we are doing is our agenda, so we don't have to talk about our agendas, freeing us to talk about whatever surfaces. At the table was where I learned about Eldon Edwards going over yonder, where we learned how Helen's husband, George R, was getting along.



We talk about politics, no one with an agenda, in mutual agreement that whether or not you like Obama, all that Washington DC mess isn't worth anything but complaining about, so we take care of our little corner of the world where what we do matters. We talk about what's going on in our lives, what's important to us in the realm of our hearts. We can't do anything to make that up there in DC any way we want it, but we can do something in the world we really do live in, at home, to make our world a bit more to our liking. What we do operates on a person to person level, instead of a bureaucracy you can't reach by phone waiting on hold all day long. Washington DC is Kafka world, a maze of bureaucracies. We don't do that. We work with that in a small town way, but we don't do that, nor do we embrace it. It's a 'small is beautiful' way of thinking without self-consciously calling it that. Much laughter runs around the table as we enjoy being together. Sometimes a decision we need to make as a group comes up conversationally and gets settled conversationally. Agnes will ask anyone to make a motion. Somebody does and she says, "A second?" Somebody says, "Second," we go on talking.



All of them are among my favorite people. They're people I feel at home with, people I don't have to smile a lot with. They're not people of the uncertain smile, the smile as self-advertisement. What you see on somebody's face is what they're feeling at the moment, not like they're gazing into an invisible mirror. Like I felt among the people at Millard Pruitt's Regular Baptist Church in Glade Valley, I feel among the people of Alleghany Planning Committee, honored they'll have me among them. Honored is the word. No matter how the word itself is interpreted, it carries my meaning. Every one of them is someone I look up to and enjoy being around. Every one of them would wonder why. It would be like, If he thinks I'm somebody special, then I know he's crazy. Maybe that's why I find them special in this time late in a life of experience with a tremendous variety of people, every race, a lot of nationalities, mean people, happy people, people that love cats, people that think a cat a target, people with fast, brilliant minds, people with slow, dull minds, most of us the rainbow in between the two poles. I like the rainbow.



Breakfast done, the last coffee downed, we filed out the door to the parking lot where we went to our separate cars and entered the flow of traffic on the way to Alleghany Cares. We were given a tour of the place by Jonnie Whitlow, getting us acquainted with the sorting rooms in one building, then to the sales floor in the adjoining building where you walk into a gallery of an infinite variety of stuff. In my childhood, my mother was bookkeeper for a TG&Y dimestore. Daddy and kids would get in the car and go pick up Mommy when she got off work. I got to know the inventory of toys very well, was allowed to pick up and play with toys understanding they're not to be broken or stolen. Even now when I walk through a variety store like that, I have a tactile need to pick things up and look at them. It's largely not allowed, so I go like in a museum, look but don't touch. They have a tremendous variety of knick-knacky little figurine dolls, just a couple inches high, of plastic and porcelain, everything. I'd never seen so many little toys. One that caught my eye was an especially lifelike leopard sitting like a housecat, maybe 3 inches high. Both my grandmothers liked little figures like that.



I went through the tour in amazement at what I was seeing. It was a museum of things. If you need a thousand coffee cups, they have them at Alleghany Cares. Time to start, Agnes sent all the men to the loading dock in back. She put Ted out front to open the door for everybody coming and going. I went to the back with Ernest and Jack. Two guys were working what little there was to do. We offered to help several times and were told there's nothing for us to do. We sat together in some chairs and spent the time talking. We also went around looking at all the items back there. Every kind of thing. Again, if you need a thousand golf clubs, Alleghany Cares is the place. Ernest found a ski without the clamps for boots. He asked what it was. A ski. It didn't compute. Somebody passing through suggested he could use it as a kind scythe to cut weeds with. We agreed that could be it's only possible function.



Jack left at 12 with Linda, who was recovering from serious illness and didn't have the strength to last the whole day. Somebody brought in a small roll-top desk, Ernest bought it. We carried it to the house in his pickup. Took a smaller desk out and carried it back to the loading dock. Ernest wanted some water and I did too. We went to the kitchen/break room where they had bottled water in the refrigerator for free. Everybody there is volunteer, so a bottle of water isn't much to begrudge. Johnnie and Barbara were in there talking. They both knew who Ernest was, but neither of them had ever had a sit down shoot the breeze conversation with him. Ernest, a mountain man, is shy of people he doesn't know. I was thinking it best to go on, because they were involved in conversation and I didn't want to break it up. Ernest sat down and opened up like with anybody he knows. He told them some jokes that had them bending over in their chairs. Right away I settled in, thinking, This is a good thing. They were having a moment of discovering the real Ernest Joines behind the blank face people he doesn't know see, the only face they ever see, because he doesn't know them. It was like when Ernest walked in the door a light spirit came into the room and lit everybody up.



It turned out to be a good day for all concerned. Agnes reported that we did very well. It hadn't been figured yet, but we'll know soon. I know she had a ball at the counter. She probably knew at least 100 people that went through there. And probably half the ones she didn't know, she knew by the time they went out the door. Somebody Agnes doesn't know is someone she doesn't know yet. Ernest is fine watching the Beverly Hillbillies or picking a tune on a guitar, mandolin or banjo. He was on a Gary Moore tv show in 1961, one of those every night shows before or after supper, wherever in the country you lived, playing his one man band. He was in early 20s. It was What's my Line or I've Got a Secret. I have a fair certainty I saw it, because at our house we never missed Gary Moore. I recall seeing on b&w tv a one man band played. It may be false memory, but it was from that time that I ever knew there was such a thing, and what it was. Never saw or heard of another one until my parachute landed me in Alleghany County. Ernest has it on video at home. The sound recording of it is on the 4-cd set of Alleghany County music Ernest put together a few years ago. When I say somebody is a true human being, Ernest and Agnes are both illustrations of my meaning.



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FUNNY TIMES

cloud over bullhead

Looking at the picture of yesterday's entry, the Phoenix Mountain Band, I saw Leo Tompkins in the background in green shirt talking to a man I know by face, but not by name. I started thinking about Leo and laughing with his sense of humor. His sense of humor is all I know about Leo. I don't know any gossip about him and don't want to. We've spoke a few times over the last 33 years, but not to say we know each other. The only time I talked with him, I asked what happened to his Roadkill Cafe poster with menu that was on the wall in a room where they kept parts. When I go into Choate to get the annual inspection sticker, I'd look at that poster, saw it once a year, had a good laugh every time, appreciated the sense of humor behind it. One day I was in there and Leo was there and the poster was gone. I asked him what went with the poster. He didn't know it was missing. He saw it was gone and got concerned about what might have went with it.

We set to talking about the poster and how funny it was. Of course, he had it there because he thought it was hilarious. It was. That was several years after he'd retired from working at Choate, running the place, whatever it was he did there. It must be a good place to work, because the people working there, work there for life. No turnover except when somebody dies or retires. Leo was a county commissioner for a few terms. He is a man who could drive the most exotic car in the county, but the last time I saw him on the road, several years ago, he was still driving the (maybe) 58 Plymouth, not one kept for a show car, but because it drove well and he loved it. On the bumper was the sticker that was there back when he was commissioner, which tells you what years it was. The picture was Mickey Mouse standing up shooting the bird. The text: HEY, IRAN. Back then I didn't know anything about county politics, and still don't, but I voted for Leo Tompkins because of the bumper sticker. I see a man with an active sense of humor.

This is a reason I'm glad Agnes Joines is on the town council. Agnes has a sense of humor that's busting out of her all the time. This is something else I love about the mountain people, that their sense of humor is alive. Old-time humor was very different from today's humor, though similar in where humor comes from. Old-time humor was situational, seeing funny in something that's happening or just happened. My first spring here, Don Pruitt and his brother Bill were showing me how to make rails by splitting a locust log lengthwise using 2 wedges and a sledge hammer. They both hammered several times and I got the hang of it. My turn. My first swing hit the edge of the wedge and it went flying straight to the right, end over end, like a ninja bullet. It went straight at Bill's ankles and he jumped out of the way on full alert. Don broke out laughing and said, "What kinda daince you call that?" Bill laughed and I laughed. They laughed at me and I laughed at me. It became something hilarious.

I realized that a sledge hammer requires some practice. You don't just start out knowing how to swing one. Over the years I improved a great deal, but always went by one thing I learned early. There are only 4 possible directions the wedge can fly, straight ahead, straight back at me, off to right or off to the left. I would place the wedge and stand between two of the directions so when the wedge took off in whatever surprise direction, spinning end-over-end in rapid flight, I would be out of the way and didn't have to do a dance to keep from getting hit. The distance of a sledge hammer handle's length doesn't give much time to escape. About the time I noticed would be when it hit my leg. Like they say in Ireland, Shite!

They'd make great weapons in medieval warfare. Rows of men skilled in hitting a wedge to make it fly exactly where they want it to go, like a golf ball. That would clear the way. But they could be picked up by the other guys they missed and used as a hand weapon. Better to use arrows. Like the war between Italy and Poland. The Polish army threw firecrackers over a wall at the Italian army. Italian army lit them and threw them back. By comparison, that's "today's" humor. Polish jokes are old by now, but in the evolution of humor from old-time situational humor among people who were each other's entertainment to the age of hi-tech pop culture, jokes by professional joke writers for late nite tv shows are consistently funny. They've dampened our joke telling by being so much better that they're intimidating. If you tell a joke now and it's not up to the tv bar, rejection, not funny, keep your day job. It looks like television has made our collective sense of humor dependent on tv for our humor. But humor is malleable. It's not going away. It's always with us in one way or another. Humor is like music and other art forms in that way.

The jokes that go around now in the hallways of schools are very different from the time I was in school. To the school kids now, my humor is old hat, like Hee Haw humor is to city people. Probably by now mine is 3rd and 4th grade humor. Going by a few I've heard over the last few years, the jokes are more racially and culturally demeaning than ever in an anti-politically correct kind of way. A trend springs up among adults to suppress smoking and it becomes a trend among teenagers to smoke. Grayson county lawyer, Lorne Campbell told me our jokes that go around from person to person come from prisons. The prisons are fountains of humor like these mountains are fountains of music. One of the aspects of Campbell I liked was he regarded people in prison and ones who have been in prison as people. They did the crime, they did the time. That's it, cat shit. It's all over. He's karmicly clean as if he'd never done the crime.