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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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.

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I KNOW SOMEBODY WENT TO HARVARD

       jaap mooy, dutch, 1915-1987

What a day it has been. First thing, I go to lunch with a friend of 30+ years. Today was not the day for us to get together. He's my contrarian friend who is knee-jerk compelled to contradict whatever I or anyone else has said. I've seen this for so long, I'm used to it. I just give over to being disrespected regularly. I don't care. I prefer to stick with a friend through interpersonal differences. The major difference between friend and self is he takes his opinions very seriously, as fact. I don't take opinions seriously at all. I have them and express them, but don't believe them necessarily. I think of opinion as a belief about something that is based on little to no information. With plenty of information, it's not an opinion. Opinions are open to be right or wrong or neither. One day a year or so ago, I'd forgotten about his passion for his own opinions; he interrupted me, stating some opinion in reference to something we were talking about that didn't even pertain. I said, "That has nothing to do with anything." Whoa. Same thing happened today.



In our conversation over the table he'd already disrespected me half a dozen times. I pay it no mind, just consider the source, knowing how seriously he values his opinions. Today we were doing well. I let moments of disrespect go by several times. Like I mentioned my friends coming up from Atlanta today with their daughter and her husband. I mentioned both had recently received their PhDs from Berkeley. That elicited a snort. I said, "I'm impressed. I couldn't even get into Berkeley." Harumph: "I know somebody went to Harvard." I sat and thought: Aw shit, let it rest. It's a knee-jerk thing that he has to keep me reminded he knows more than I do, is more informed than I am, is superior in every way and every department. And I say, Ok, hooray, you're superior. You can piss higher than I can. I'm fine with that. Now that we know our places, can't we get on with our conversation? I have to confess I get tired of the reminders. He has a master's degree in science, just like Dr Science of the Duck's Breath Mystery Theater.



In the early years of knowing him, it drove me crazy sometimes. I'd get with myself in a serious way and tell myself to stay away from him, all he does is aggravate me with the ongoing brow beating that he knows more than I do, has better judgment than I have, has more interesting experience than I have. Hooray. I really am fine with it. I live in a world of people I believe superior to me in every way. I'm ok with it. I'm used to it. I like smart people. So we're sitting at the table and I've held my peace for an hour and a half or so. We were doing well. Then I said something about something I found on the internet. Harumph: "I know everything that's on the internet." That one broke the camel's back. I said, "You do not know everything that's on the internet." Phew. That one blew the volcano's stack. "I never said I knew everything about the internet." I held my ground. "Yes you did. Those were your words." "I didn't say that." Whatever. Within five minutes we'd paid and were out the door. I'd dissed him. Feces occurs.



Earlier the contrarian came up when he pushed me about painting abstraction instead of realism. I told him AGAIN that I paint for the people of the world I live in. I live in Alleghany County. I paint for the people of Alleghany County. Their aesthetic is recognizable realism, so that's how I paint. I don't live in New York, London or Paris. I live in Alleghany. I get reminded of past lectures on I should be painting for myself. I had to stress that I do not have room in my house. He writes for himself. Earlier he'd asked me about the process of starting a blog. I brought that up and suggested he not put his writing to himself in a blog, because then someone else might see it. I suggested if he wants to write for himself, write it all in a notebook and when it's full, throw it in the fire and start a new one. It's the only way you can be sure no one else will see it. Several times in the past I've got with myself about talking openly with him. But I tell myself if I'm going to be like that, stay away from him. Since I don't care to shit-can friends, I continue to go back for more. It's not hateful. Nor is it hurtful. Nor is it demeaning or rough on self esteem. It just is what it is. Two people in this world that know each other.


I'd missed my morning coffee, and the coffee ordered at the restaurant was awful. And it was luke warm. It was disgusting. I understood suddenly why we have coffee shops now. Restaurants can't make coffee anymore. If they ever could. I find restaurant coffee especially bitter for the most part, and when I drink some in a restaurant it's because I want coffee so bad I don't care how terrible it is. In a restaurant the first time, I usually order spaghetti, because most restaurants are incapable of screwing up spaghetti. Boil it and throw on sauce from a five gallon can. We left the restaurant and I wanted to go to Selma's for some real coffee and rational conversation. Did I ever jump into it there. A table with Tim, Joe, Todd and Mr Moxley engaged in conversation. I sat down and we proceeded to go into a subject I didn't know we all saw pretty much the same way on. The shop was full of people we'd never seen before. A constant flow of so many people it kept Selma busy, which we're all happy to see.



We had animated conversation over our own coffees we like, mine Kenyan done French press. Joe drinks good tea. All these guys have active, intelligent minds. I love listening to them talk with each other. I love being in conversation individually with all of them and all of them together. Not one of us plays I-know-more-than-you-do. That game is entirely absent from the coffee shop, anyway among us. I can't speak for the people going in there I don't know. I remember in the early months when we who call ourselves the "regulars" would tune out when someone came in we didn't know who started posturing. Not one of us is responsive to posturing. We're all glad we found each other. It would have been complete if Dudley had been there, but he's on his way back from Seattle. It was refreshing to have these guys to talk with, not one of them a contrarian, all, acutally, sympathetic with each other, minimal judgment going around the table, if any. I arrived home around 4, went straight to the bed, kicked off shoes, stretched out, covered up and stayed there feeling my nervous system worn out from talking and paying close attention for 4 hours. Too wired to sleep, I relaxed into inner stillness and stayed there long enough to let all that nervous energy spiral down the drain.



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ONE DAY IN SPARTA

sparta

Lunch with Jim Winfield at the Mexican restaurant, Misarados, my plow. It's a good place for lunch. Very successful restaurant. The Mexican restaurant before it was a good one too, but one of the employees embezzled it out of business. The people with the restaurant now came along and made a go of it as a family business. Everyone working there is in the family. They did with their kids what Mexicans come to USA to do, give the kids a better life. I've watched these kids grow up and by the time they're out of school, they are capable, on the ball people. The whole town has taken to the place over the years for the good food, good prices and good service. It's where I learned I don't care much for Mexican music, but for salsa. The trumpet and iy-yi-yi-yi music is, I'm sure, great at local dances in Mexico. I expect if I were to hear such a band playing at a dance someplace in Mexico, I'd love it. It has a vibrant spirit. But it grabs my attention about like Lawrence Welk. Next.

Saw an interesting Chinese film today, BE WITH ME, an art film out of Hong Kong. Art film out of Hong Kong means no guns. I took it for Hong Kong because everyone wore shorts and light tshirts, semi-tropical. It was a quiet looks into the lives of several people who interweave through the story, such that by the end, it all comes together as things work out. Beautifully filmed. Almost no talking. Very little. The drama amounted to the relationships of the different people. One of the characters was a blind woman in her 60s who is capable of basic cooking, cleaning house, wrapping presents, doing everything by feel and memory. She is one of the characters in the story, plays herself. She's a blind woman who handles it very well. The relationships that seem early on to be simple everyday life relationships turn intense by the end in matter of fact ways, as in life. They're everyday people going about their lives.

It turns out everyone has a loneliness that drives them in whatever ways they go. And it has no stars. Some of the people know each other and some don't. It's everyday life with natural intensities instead of big drama intensities with fights and guns and explosions. There is the elderly man who takes an interest in cooking for the blind woman, which brought him up out of his depression. Quiet relationship stories that wove a kind of mental tapestry that seems like very little is going on until toward the end when things start falling into place. Much, Oh, so that's what.... Beautiful, soft spoken, plain looking people--no one looked like a movie star. I believe I'll see it tomorrow too. It's one to see twice, to enjoy it again.

I stopped in at the Hospice office after filling the tank with gas and buying a cross-bar tire-iron for the trunk. Now I'm set. At Hospice I visited with Vickie Todd awhile, saw Michelle and Donna. They were so important in my mission to keep Jr at home, I'm grateful for them every day. I like to stop in from time to time, to keep in touch, to remember what special people they are. In my time of retirement, thanks to Social Security, I am staying on my mountain, which was my initial purpose coming to the mountains. I wasn't ready then. I'm ready now. The people I see are my friends, people who don't spin webs of trouble where they go, nobody playing one-upmanship games, nobody positioning themselves on the hierarchical ladder of status. The people I like the most are satisfied with their absence of status, don't want it, and psychological games are not even a consideration. I'm so free of those kinds of games now that when I meet somebody who likes to play games like Gotcha and It's your fault, control and dominance, it stands out like an alarm going off. I think, Later for this, and find the cat hole.

Something else I don't miss stayin on my mountain. "You know what you oughta do!" and, "You needta," and you gotta be there, you gotta see it, you gotta hear it, you gotta buy it, you gotta have it. You gotta, oughta, needta. I've got so bad that when somebody says, You know what you oughta do? I say, Yes. That's the end of it. It comes across to the other as rude, but somebody telling me what I oughta do, when I know for a certainty they do not know, is rude in my way of seeing. When it comes down to answering the question about a pet peeve, I suppose this is mine. It's nothing but thoughtlessness, the kind of thing that you wouldn't say if you thought about it before saying it.

Stopped in at the BROC office and talked with Donna, who was taking care of the place today. Since Betty Bledsoe died, we have a replacement now. Since I'm with BROC I like to know the new people. I used to stop and see Betty from time to time, smoke cigarettes and talk. I miss Betty. I'm glad she went out fast, for her sake. She'd been with BROC as long as I've been in the mountains. It's the only organization with meetings that I want to stay with in Sparta. The others were civic sorts of things that belong to people involved in Sparta, which I'm not anymore. There are plenty of people in Sparta I like to see. I find when I go to town now, I make it a point to stop by and see somebody at work for a few minutes, keeping in touch. It used to be that when I went to Sparta I came home depressed. Now, I come home lit up and feeling good, because I've visited with friends I've not seen in a matter of months. Like I went to pay property taxes the other day and I know everybody in the tax office, had to talk with everybody, came out of there feeling well and happy. I'm finding there's a great number of people I care a very great deal for.