Thanksgiving 2010

I'm thankful that it only comes once a year. I've said this over and over again, to the point that my friends at the coffee shop groan when I bring it up. I'm not crazy about turkey and the six or eight types of mush that goes along with the thanksgiving meal.

This year, my son and his wife could not be home for thanksgiving, and all of my close friends were engaged with their families, so, faced with the prospect of just my wife, mother, and my self consuming this huge meal, I turned to the company of strangers. Not really strangers, but neighbors that Kathy and I did not know very well, but they seemed like nice people. We invited Doug and Kay, who have lived a few blocks up the street for about twenty five years, and Wade and Dawn, who have lived in Concord only a few years, and also live just up the street. Kay's brother, Bob, who lives in Georgia was coming to town, so we also invited him. These two couples did not know each other. I had a great time, and I hope everyone else did. Let me tell you about it.

Everyone came to the house about an hour and a half before dinner, and we had a few drinks and chatted about this and that. I guess we were all a bit stiff, and on our best behavior, but polite and friendly. We sat down to dinner and continued our conversation. You can imagine most of the conversation, a brief synopsis of our life histories. Where we were from, our children, what kind of work we did. Bob was an ex Air Force pilot, and he talked about his experiences in Vietnam, and Doug, Wade, and I talked about why we were not in the service. I'm pretty gregarious, so I like this kind of stuff, just getting to know a little about each other. I had promised myself that I would not talk about politics or religion, and I did pretty well until the coffee and deserts were finished. (I can imagine a collective groan from any of my friends that happen to read this.) Some how, (perhaps I brought it up) the subject of military spending came up, specifically, the cost of the new Joint Task Force Fighters soon to be built. As you can guess, a subject near and dear to Bob, the ex fighter pilot. Things tensed up a bit. We quickly jumped from the cost of the planes, to the need for the size of our military, to justification for the war in Iraq, to intervention in the Iranian nuclear program, and ultimately to the projection of American military might all over the world. Big wars always start small. Bob seems to be a reasonable man, and I generally am as well, so the whole discussion was pretty low key, although we were in most cases on opposite sides of the issues.

The problem though, is this. Even in a reasonable conversation, most of the dialogue consists of zingers and incomplete thoughts. It's impossible to have perfectly reasoned and erudite responses to each other's remarks. It's not like an episode of "West Wing". This is why I've found that I like to write this stuff down, even if no one ever reads it. Here's what I think about America's Military.

I'm not a naive left wing fool, I think that we need a strong military to protect our country, and our interests. I don't think that our military needs to be five or ten times stronger than any potential foe. I think that we are a danger to ourselves and to the rest of the world because of the force we can bring to bear.

Just as we destroyed the Soviet Union by out spending them in the arms race, we are financially destroying our selves with the ever increasing cost of our military. I looked this up; actually, direct defense costs in real dollars have been fairly constant since the mid sixties, but increasingly we are borrowing money to pay for that defense spending, and now, the debt burden is almost as much as the actual defense cost. In addition to the cost of simply maintaining our military, we have the astronomical costs of the the wars we have gotten ourselves into. Like I said, all wars start small. Advisers in Vietnam to half a million troops and fifty thousand American solders dead. Topple Saddam Hussein and more than eight years of occupation, plus a trillion dollars spent.

The biggest problem with our huge military is the potential to use it. Yes, Iran probably has a nuclear program, North Korea certainly does. Both countries exhibit bizarre behavior, but are not crazy to the point of inviting annihilation by provoking a nuclear attack by us if they were to explode a nuclear war head over us or one of our allies. We can deal with both countries the same way we dealt with Russia and China during the cold war. We assure mutual destruction if attacked, and we wait them out. Things change, leaders are ousted, our enemies become our friends. We have dealt with North Korea for sixty five years, and an adversarial Iran for thirty. So far, our leaders have not had the stomach to deal with either one of them militarily. The danger is that our military power might embolden our future leaders to leap over the precipice.

Of course, there is the real danger of a country like North Korea providing nuclear weapons to a third party in an attempt to damage us by proxy, but we already live with that danger in Russia and Pakistan. I can't see how a massive military option can protect us from that kind of danger.

I could go on with this, but it's almost time to go to the coffee shop, so I'll stop now.

The Perfect Pet

Well, it's four thirty in the morning, and I've been lying in bed awake for the last hour and a half with random semi dream state sparks of wisdom going off in my head.

Many years ago when the notion of no good deed going unpunished was not yet firmly implanted in my brain, one of my cousins and his brother in law asked me if I could give them a hand on the coming Tuesday night, and thinking they needed me to help move a refrigerator or something, I agreed to help. They picked me up, and I became highly suspicious when I realized that they both had on coats and ties. I was afraid that they were going for some kind of religious intervention, but even worse, it turned out to be an Amway meeting.

So, I go to this meeting, and during the rah-rah section where they are trying to convince everyone of the fabulous wealth they are about to obtain, they posed the question: "What would you buy if you had all the money you wanted. One by one, they let everyone in the room answer the question. Considering the unlimited nature of the question, most of the answers were fairly pedestrian, some wanted a new house, or to take a trip. One stringy haired hippy type kid said that he would love to have a new Trans-Am with a big eagle across the hood. You have to admire some one with such lofty goals. I don't remember what I said, but I was not very enthusiastic about the process, so maybe I just wished for cab fare. Anyway, this little event sometimes comes to mind when I'm lying in bed reviewing life's injustices, and this morning my stream of conscience led me to consider what I would buy if I indeed had a boat load of money.

Let's say that tomorrow, I won the Power Ball lottery (my only chance of an early and decent retirement), and the winnings were, I don't know, say 300 million. Enough to put me into the top one percent. I think I would go out and buy a new pet.

I've had a series of dogs during my life, poodles, and schnauzers and mongrels, some smart, and some dumb and stubborn. They've all been good companions, but if I were rich, I would go for a working breed, I would buy myself a congressman.

I would not want a Senator, the purebred strains suffer from too much inbreeding, and they tend to be stupid and high maintenance. Plus, they are much more expensive, and they will often turn on the hand that feeds them.
A member of the House of Representatives is a much better choice. These working class curs, while they may not have the looks or the deep throat ed bark of a pure breed, make the best pets. They are low maintenance, and easily trained. You simply give them a semiannual feeding of Purina Congressional Chow, and they roll over and display their unconditional love. To properly train them, you use positive reinforcement. You give them a treat when they show good behavior, or obediently follow your commands. A small cash incentive, or a sweet deal on a mortgage, or a trip, and they are eager to please. Negative reinforcement also works for the big infractions. A threat to withhold their semiannual feeding bring them fawning to you feet with their tail down and their head held low.

You want to pick one with a bit of a retriever mix, and schnauzer for tenacity, but be careful, too much lab makes them fat and lazy. I think it would be wise to pick a male, the females are much too sensitive when you speak sharply to them.

Congressional pets are great crowd pleasers. They have good social skills, and seldom pee on the carpet. Let them mingle at a party, and don't worry, they can be petted with no danger of a bite. Be careful with alcohol, they tend to get yippy with too much to drink, and have a tendency to hump. Also don't allow you guests to feed them from the table, the congressman may try to follow you guest home.

The best thing about a congressional pet is not his love or his cuteness, its what, as a working breed, they can do for you. If you are wealthy enough to be able to afford one, they can repay your investment many times over. If I, having won my 300 million, purchased a congressman, I would expect him to guard my money by somehow exempting me from paying taxes on it. If he could not do that, I might as well have a dog.

The Rain Maker

Guard you wallet folks, the rain maker is coming to town. After hearing about the proposed purchase of the Phillip Morris property by a company called Stargate World Wide, I spent a little time on the Internet trying to get some information on the company and its founder, Terry Keeney.

When I looked at the very nebulous website, I noticed several things that brought up red flags. First of all, in the third paragraph of the home page was this sentence: "Investors seeking a 10-30% or more return are encouraged to contact Stargate World wide." This sounds like one of those too good to be true offers that isn't. In addition, the entire website is vague about it's projects, and at the same time overblown in it's opinion of itself. I encourage everyone to go to the site and carefully read the literature.

I also looked up Terry Keeney on the Internet. For a man proposing a $750,000,000 project, there is remarkably little information on the Internet about him. He has a face book account with limited personal information, he is barely mentioned on a couple of other business networking sites, and there is some buzz about this Phillip Morris venture, which is not even off the ground, and a few mentions of a racetrack he owns in Georgia. When I Googled Georgia USA Speedway, there was no information I could discern. I'm not sure if it even exists.

It would be a shame if the Phillip Morris property and Cabarrus county became in tangled in a Heritage Village type boondoggle. I hope that everyone involved in this project proceeds very cautiously.

Fishing Stories: The "Poor Banks"

When I was about ten, my dad found a new place to fish. A truly wild and remote place less than forty miles from Concord, this spot is as isolated today as it was fifty years ago. It is the east side of the Pee Dee river in the free flowing section below Lake Tillery, and above Blewett Falls Lake. Here, when the turbines are running at the Tillery dam, the swift water roils and boils past the steep and slippery banks. When the turbines are still, the swift water runs away, and the river becomes a patch work of pools and rocks. The spot my father discovered is about five miles below the Tillery dam, close to the confluence of Rocky river on the far shore.

Getting there was an adventure in itself. Highway 731 did not bridge the river just below the dam as it does now. We would take the Lilly bridge road to Hydro (the road to the power plant), and then, a few miles on we turned off onto an old logging road, pushing aside the brush and tree limbs that hid the entrance to the road. Once on the road, some of the foliage had been cut back by my dad and his buddies so that you could at least see the obstacles ahead. My dad had an early fifties Plymouth station wagon that had been used as a delivery car by his employer, until, when it was worn out, my dad bought it for a fishing car. The old car's clutch slipped when you showered down on the gas in high gear, but pulled fine in first and second. My dad, a mechanic, could have easily repaired the clutch, but he drove the car softly on the highway, and it never was much of an issue. The road in to the Poor Banks was a different story. There were a series of water filled elongated muddy pot holes that required a high speed running start to traverse them. My dad would pull up to one, and reconnoiter it as if he were in a canoe about to float a dangerous set of rapids. Then he would back up maybe a hundred feet or so, gun it in first gear, and with the engine whining hit the water like a stone skipping across a lake. We usually make it. On occasion, we would stop disappointingly short of our goal. Then it was jacks and poles and muddy feet. The last two hundred yards was down a steep slippery hillside to the campsite. There was no question about making it to the bottom, the ruts were so deep, he barely need to steer. The climb out was a whole nother story. The flat area that comprised our campsite became a runway for the liftoff up and over the hill. The old Plymouth's mud grip tires spewed mud and stones into a rooster tail out behind the car. It lurched and groaned as my dad sawed the steering wheel back and forth searching for the best traction. The progress became slower and slower until just as the car was about to bog down, we crested the hill. All this was usually achieved in one try, but when we failed, backing down the hill for a restart was butt puckering.

The campsite did not have the sense of permanence that my uncle Aurthur's camp at Whitney had, but it had all of the amenities. There were some benches and half picnic tables built out of lumber from a slab pile. There was a foot log over the steep banks of the small branch where it joined the river. Fifty yards up the creek which rose rapidly up the valley from the river, there was a natural rock pool where the caught cat fish swam until they were netted for dinner. The cat fish would be trapped for weeks in the little pool unless a heavy rain flooded the creek and they were reunited with the river. Just above this little pool, we obtained our water for drinking cooking and washing. It was most always clear and clean, straight off the lizzard's back as my father would say. In addition to the permanent fixtures of the camp there was the gear that was too bulky or too much trouble to take home every weekend. An axe, set hook poles, fire grate, all sorts of things were hidden up in the woods. This flat area that comprised our campsite extended downriver to a point where the creek entered the river. Here, when the turbines were spinning, the water was deep and a reverse eddy would slowly sweep my fishing rig counter clockwise from the downriver side of the creek, ark around just below my feet, and as it reached the upriver point, would be swept out into the current to repeat the process again. I could catch serious fish here, large bream and redbreast, an occasional cat fish, once or twice an eel.



The real fishing was done at night. A cane pole with a short line and medium sized hook was placed standing upright about every twenty five feet along the river for a half a mile or so. Along about dusk, my dad and his buddies would cross the foot log over the branch and follow the trail along side the river, baiting the hooks and sticking the poles out over the river side so that the baited hooks dangled in the water. Then every couple of hours through the night, they would walk the line of set hooks, and remove the caught fish. With a hundred or more poles set, by morning there would be plenty of fish to eat, take home, and to store in the pool if the fish weren't biting on a subsequent trip. Of course, there was plenty of time to drink before the poles were set and between trips to check them.

Bring too young to drink, I wasn't always brought along for these trips to the Poor Banks, so I only know about a few things that happened there.

I know that one year, my uncle Claude fell off the foot log and in climbing back up the bank, he got a case of Poison Ivy so severe that he had to be hospitalized. Another time, my dad came home with a bad cut on his neck which had been sewn up with fishing line. The snakes were bad. I never saw a rattle snake, but the copperheads were very common, and you had to watch your step when you walked the set hooks, and always watch where you put your hands or feet. We killed 13 copperheads one particularly warm Easter. Four of us walked right by a really big one beside the trail in broad daylight. My dad's little dog spotted it, jumped it, and killed it before he could be bitten. A dog will bite a snake and shake it like his life depends on it, which in this case it did.

One year my uncle John had been released from prison, and so far had been behaving himself. He camped with us on the river one week end in late summer. I was thirteen or fourteen at the time. Usually on Saturday, the turbines were spinning and the water was at full flow, but this particular Saturday the turbines were shut off and the water was low. This, by the way, was almost always the case on Sunday mornings. you could wade all the way across the river when it was low, and if the water was released through the turbines, you could actually hear it coming, and see the rising water a way up the river before it reached you. When you would first notice that the water was coming, you had five or ten minutes to get to shore before you were swept away. When the the water was low and you had not caught too many fish the night before, there was an opportunity for some discrete telephoning. With one person cranking, and a couple of people with nets, you could catch a sack full in just a little bit. There are a lot of fish in that river.
Usually the telephoning was done early on Sunday morning, on the theory that wildlife officials would not be out and about in their little plane. My uncle John, who was recklessly fearless (thus the prison time) and I (young and dumb) decided to go grabbling.

We waded out into the river with a burlap bag, and we would wade up to a big rock surrounded by water. the water was usually a foot or so deep around the rock. We would get on opposite sides of the rock, and submerged up to our chins, feel around for holes under the rock. There was almost always a hole on each side of the rock, and a water filled cavity underneath. There would usually be several catfish under each rock, ranging in size from ten inches to two feet in lenght. The trick was to move around very slowly with your hands, until you could pin the fish and get your thumb in its mouth and your fingers behind it's lateral fins and the horns on their leading edges. Then it was a simple matter to pull them out and put them in the sack. I'll admit that it wasn't like the Okie noodlers show on PBS, we didn't get up under the banks, or put our heads under the water. We never saw a snake when we were out away from the bank grabbling, but we would occasionally see a large eel with just its head under a rock. We weren't that crazy about eels, so we would by pass those rocks, there were plenty more. I don't think I could bring myself to go grabbling today. My uncle John hung around town for a while, until the rest of the family was glad to finally see him leave. He went to work on a shrimp boat down in Florida, and came home at Christmas either that year or the following. His best friend who he worked with came home with him, and they stayed at my Aunt's house for several weeks, with no madness or mayhem. A few weeks after he and his buddy went back to Florida, John was arrested for murdering this same fellow, and John served seven years for manslaughter. After he was released from prison this time, he went back to Florida to work. I don't remember him ever coming back to Concord.

My dad became very good friends with a black man who lived in Mt Gilead. He and his wife, Mayzel, and their kids would sometimes walk in from the road to fish, and would often eat with us. He lived in the country out side of town, and we rabbit hunted with him several times. My dad always referred to him as Nigger Bill, and I don't believe any offence was taken or intended. Bill named his youngest son after my dad. Things have changed.

My dad finally retired the old Plymouth, and got a newer model. This time it was a 56 Chevy panel wagon, also a cast off from where he worked. It ran fine, he had rebuilt the engine, but it had a habit of slipping out of high gear. It was just a linkage problem, that I'm sure could have been easily fixed, but he found that a forked stick wedged between the dash and the gear shift lever worked fine. By the time I was eighteen, I had his fishing car and several of my friends to camp at the Poor Banks, and I'm sure they still remember the place. I haven't tried to get there in years, in fact, I think that the access road has been gated and posted. I have canoed the river between the two dams several times over the years, and its a beautiful trip. You can see Ospreys and Bald Eagles along the river, and in late summer the water is usually very clear. You have to be very careful in a canoe on the river, there are some small rapids and submerged rocks and fallen partially submerged tree trunks. The water is so swift that even in fairly shallow spots, you would not be able stand up if you capsized, and the banks are so steep and rough you would play hell getting out.

When I canoe the river, I always look for our campsite, but its rough and overgrown, and I can't find it from the boat.

Fishing Stories, The "River"

My dad and my uncles loved to fish, drink, and hunt. For obvious reasons, they would not drink while they hunted, but no one ever got shot while fishing, so drinking while fishing was not only accepted, but expected as well. Fishing had the added bonus of being an excuse to be gone from home for the entire week end, as opposed to hunting which could only be done legally on Saturday.

They learned to hunt and fish from their father, an old time sportsman of the type that nearly depleted America of all fish and fowl. My grand father once told me how they would hunt Quail from astride mules with nets. The dogs would point, and the mules would walk to either side of the dog with the riders stretching a net between them. The mules, for what ever reason did not spook the quail. When the net was in place, the dog would be allowed to flush the quail, and they would become entrapped in the net. My dad told me how, as kids, on early spring nights, they would go into the cane breaks along Cold Water Creek with sticks, and beat the roosting Robins out of the canes. Its a wonder there is a Robin left in the whole world. I have personally never eaten a Robin, but would be willing, were they not protected songbirds. Another favorite past time handed down to my father was telephoning. For you PETF people, let me explain. Catfish have very sensitive whiskers that are used to help them locate food. These whiskers are in turn very sensitive to an electrical current. The trick here is to induce an electrical current strong enough to disorient the fish but not strong enough to disorient the men wading around in the water with nets, waiting to scoop up the electrified fish. May be the reader might remember the old time crank telephones that you might have seen on an early Andy Griffith show. These phones were not in use when I was young, but they were still plentiful. That crank that the caller would turn was attached to a powerful generator inside the box. These old telephones were robbed of their generators and cranks which were then mounted in their own little boxes with wires attached to them which were thrown out into the water. Thus: Telephoning. This activity had to be done very discretely, as, even in those days, it was illegal.

I didn't get to fish much with my dad and his buddies, I guess because I was too young to drink, and too much trouble for a drunken fisherman to keep an eye on. I did get to go on occasion, and here are a few things I remember. When I was around six or seven the fishing spot of choice was at Lilly Bridge on the Pee Dee river. The fishing trips were always referred to as going to the "river", not to Badin, or Tillery, or the Pee Dee, just the "river". This ambiguity helped protect my father and friends from bothersome emergencies like a death in the family or say, my mother going into labor. But I digress. I first learned to fish with a cane pole. It had a lenght of line about equal to the lenght of the pole, a tiny little gold plated hook, a small sinker, or "split shot", and one of those elongated red and white bobbers. I always fished with worms. I don't remember ever catching anything but bream about the size of my, at the time, very small hand. Later I graduated to a rod and reel, which was a big leap for me and a big sacrifice for my dad. Back then, there were no spinning reels, only baitcasters, that is, the kind of reel that has a spool mounted perpendicular to the lenght of the rod. When you cast this type of rod and reel, the trick is to keep your thumb lightly on the spool as the sinker and line flies through the air. Failure to maintain the proper pressure on the spool results in the spool spinning out of control and creating a tangle of line known as a backlash. I'll bet that at lot of younger people don't even realize that this is the origin of that word. Anyway, significant and frequent backlashes kept my dad busy, and resulted in the backlash of not being frequently invited back until I mastered the skill. A little side light. I remember there was a little store at Lilly Bridge. The building was small maybe twenty feet square, and it stocked the basics, crackers, sardines, pork and beans, bait, etc. The one thing that always stuck in my mind. They sold Vienna Sausage. I guess most people are still familiar with these things. They are the type of byproduct food that Upton Sinclair wrote about in "The Jungle". But these Vienna Sausage were special, the label read artificial Vienna Sausage. I wonder what they were made of.

We also fished at Whitney. This is at the upper end of Badin lake, just below the Tuckertown dam. To get there we would go North on 49 to east on 52, take a left at New London, and then a left onto the dirt road to Whitney. Its about a thirty mile trip from home. The reason I've given the directions, is not that I hope you go there, but to point out that when my dad was a child, his dad would load up the boys in the model T and go to Whitney to fish. At that time highway 49 had not been built, so they would go to Millingpoint on highway 73 which was paved, but then from Millingpoint on to Whitney, the roads were dirt, and, according to my uncle, they would have to stop several times each way to repair flat tires. They loved to fish.

There are several things I remember about Whitney. There were always about a dozen wooden rowboats chained to the trees along the river bank. They were flat bottomed, usually full of water, and must have weighed a ton. I never saw anyone go out in one. The banks were beaten bare to the red clay along them by fisherman walking along the shore, and camping on the river banks. One summer, I remember, there was a big cicada hatch, and there were thousands of round holes in the clay where the the cicada larva had metamorphosed and flown away.

I also remember that my dad's friend, Pete Dick(previously mentioned) and my uncle Arthur, and some other reprobates set up an extended stay camp along side one of the ponds impounded by the railroad tracks between the ponds and the river. They were living large. They had a couple of big old surplus army tents, some mattresses, a little dugout place in the branch to store excess fish they caught, and lots of whiskey. I think they ate fish every meal, small little catfish fried crispy so that you could crunch and eat the small bones. I think that the sheriff was finally forced to take action. I don't really know why, Whitney was so far back in the sticks in those days, I can't imagine who they might have offended.

Whitney and Lilly Bridge are just preludes to the main event, the "river" otherwise known as the "Poor Banks".