Blog

The DMV is just down the hill from us. Maybe a quarter mile. We stopped in to get our North Carolina drivers licenses last week. While Asheville may be the friendliest place on Earth their DMV is a dead zone. Which should have been anticipated. Bureaucracy being such a great leveler.

We brought ID supposing that a New Hampshire license with a backup credit card or Medicare card would suffice, but no. They wanted an original social security card, a birth certificate, or a passport in addition to the license. And if your middle initial was shown on one but your middle name was spelled out in full on the other God help you! Might as well just go back to 1946 and start all over.

When you get to be my age the licensing process cannot be taken for granted. "Press your forehead against the bar and read the fourth line to me." "Can't read the fourth line; second line looks like: y h l m x." "OK, what do you see to the left of that line?” “Nothing.” “Nothing?” “Nope.” “What’s going on with that eye?” “Glaucoma.” “Okay, let’s try the right eye.” And of course the right eye did just fine. There is a couple I met 30 years ago through a dear friend. Bright people. Engaging. Good to be around. But now I hear that things have gone all fuzzy for Bill; he’s had to give up his practice, and his wife checks in on him. My eyes are much the same, one essentially doing the work of two.

Then there’s the mug shot. I do not excel at these. They tell you to smile if you want to, but the DMV is not a smiling place, not to mention that my simulated smiles play as addled smirks (also I was not exactly sure where the camera was); so rather than enter a 5 year relationship with a likeness that clearly doesn’t get it, I sat stoically until I was told to leave.

New Hampshire licenses are quite hideous; stark photographs wrapped round by huge, horsey type; the overall graphic design reminiscent of Soviet architecture. Clearly the work of someone with advanced glaucoma in both eyes. But my North Carolina license arrived yesterday and it is, by contrast, a breath of fresh air (or “free are” as they say down here). Type that draws you in, sharp flashless photography, a nice little border around the photograph, and a ghosted bi-plane in the background.

When I look at the photograph I do not see someone who is necessarily criminal. I see a little old man looking slightly surprised, and perhaps caught in the middle of a thought that he should not share. But harmless. Someone you could trust — though the eyes are a bit too close together, surely closer than they used to be. When we are young we have a certain verdancy that helps cover up physical design flaws. As we age that all gets stripped away leaving us as open and unprotected as the coast of Newfoundland. But there is a certain beauty to that. I am told.

Some spring morning several decades gone I stood spade in hand, staring at earth I’d just disturbed; the sod weak, more weed than grass, the soil a Twix bar texture of frost and gravel. To the surface of that rubbled ground rose 50 grey zombies, each staggering uncertainly before righting itself and taking flight. Bumblebees. So different from the well preened queens who rule the pollen and live in Mardi Gras.

We said goodbye to our dear cat Lucy today. Only 12 years old but failing rapidly to tumors and lesions, we had her put, as they say, to sleep, and buried her on the hillside below our deck where we can share a thought with her -- and where she might have some sense of the deer that appear at dusk at the wood's edge.

I am a long time advocate of cremation but I am thinking this evening that there is something satisfyingly solid about a piece of stone with a few letters and numbers etched in it. Something that says unequivocally: I was once here. If it encourages a certain introspection, or a photograph, so much the better. And if that stone in its pleasant surroundings should occasionally prompt the spreading of a blanket for a picnic lunch we might just have to reconsider where we draw the line between life and death.

We awaken to birdsong in a house shared with subcontractors. Deer and electricians frequent the property. In one week all major construction issues will have been dealt with, leaving us, the birds and the deer to sort through nuances of life in a land of dappled sunlight.

Santina and I are enjoying getting to know Asheville while we wait for the final inspections on our house. The house is looking great and all of our neighbors have been wonderfully welcoming.

History is around every corner. The source of the healing sulphur springs that established Asheville as a health spa in the early 19th century are rumored to be just down the hill from us. And if you walk up the hill toward the Asheville School you'll find even more history in an enchanting graveyard that includes a slave cemetery, some Civil War soldiers' graves, a tribute to WWII soldiers, a Remington horse-and-rider statue (for some reason) and any number of little reminders that death need not be such a solemn occasion.

While there have been no deaths directly attributable to our move to Asheville, the beaches of South Carolina are littered this past week with the wreck of a certain beauty. Non-stinging we are told -- which adds to the allure. Big as softballs. And so many. What piece of celestial reasoning sends these otherworldly bodies floating in?

We are enjoying our last weekend* in Myrtle Beach with Jane and Alan. Heat and humidity have now joined forces in the Lowcountry; we plan our activities accordingly. Time to head for the mountains.

* or so we say, but don't you know it ain't over till Edie Brickell sings:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RzhTN9zW3w

There's more than one way to engage the enemy.

17th century Scottish Highlanders, opting for direct confrontation, discarded their kilts and went shrieking into battle wearing only their shirts and wielding double edged claymoors. The Highland Charge had its moment, and it may have saved on the dry cleaning, but like The Who smashing their instruments on stage, the initial effect became hard to duplicate.

History is also full of brilliant diversionary tactics where a bunch of guys go off and make a lot of noise to turn the enemy's head, and while the enemy is assessing that problem the real problem smokes them from the blindside. A variation of that exists in today's politics where a traditional Republican candidate, while pondering whether to shake one fist or two at those free-spending Democrats, runs the risk of being whacked by one of his or her own 2x4 wielding Tea Partyers who consider fist shaking an offensively wimpy response.

In the Battle of Cranesway Drive, Santina and I like to vary our tactics. After making our Highland Charge and snickersnacking our claymoors we've stepped judiciously aside to re-fasten our kilts and assess our progress. The threat of suit has indeed brought our warring contractor and bank together. The contractor claims -- and our flooring man confirms -- that a truce has been signed that allows the bank to pay the flooring company our flooring allowance (money the contractor cannot come up with). So this is good.

The flooring material arrives today and installation begins on Monday. With luck it's completed by Friday when our household goods are delivered. Meanwhile our bank, with whom we have a Tea Party/Republican relationship, has gone all quiet on us; phone calls and email enquiries notwithstanding. So what do you suppose those guys are up to?

Chapter 13 -- Waiting for Godot,
or Hitch Hiking on a Road with No Traffic


Back in my formative years, before I'd become aware of the various errors of my ways (before I'd even made most of them), Tony Megaro and I hitch hiked from Fort Benning, Georgia to Savannah to buy leather dye to finish the pocketbooks we were making for our women. It's all I actually remember about the OJT part of basic training. That and spending time in a darkroom. I was supposed to be training as an electrician but there was no such training, which likely explains my enduring wariness in the presence of waffle irons and my utter fascination with bug zappers.

We did get a series of interesting rides to Savannah. Also nearly got run over sitting on a curb by a driver who apparently didn't like our looks. And we actually found leather dye, almost immediately; but rides were hard to come by on our return. As darkness descended we parked ourselves on a lonely road under a well lit billboard for a speedway. Cars were pulling in for the evening event so we figured that sooner or later they'd also be leaving, and we were banking on that. Buster, the local sheriff, blue lights flashing, pulled up and asked us what we were up to. We explained but as he rolled up the cruiser window he was shaking his head.

When the races finally ended cars and trucks started streaming out. Our hopes rose, but then plummeted when the billboard lights went out, leaving us in pitch black on a fast road made faster by a thousand homeward bound, blood-surging, stock car aficionados on a stretch of macadam infamous for its pedestrian deaths -- 16 in the previous 12 months are the numbers I remember.

But we hatched a plan, because Tony was very resourceful. We stood down off the road, Tony with his underpants -- because they were white -- wrapped round his extended forearm, and me feebly striking matches each time a pickup roared by. Eventually the park emptied out. As we glumly considered our options a lone car slowly approached. I was striking our last match when the blue lights came on. Buster. "Get in. Whatcha got in the bag? Wouldn't be marry wanna would it?" "Nope, leather dye." Which seemed to satisfy him and he drove us back to the base.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Santina and I continue to stand under our own billboard waiting for our contractor to do what we really no longer believe he intends to; which is to finish our house. We've told him next Friday or else. Completion is oh so close, closer than the backside of the Berlin Wall, but we don't have decades to tear this one down.

Purty colors, real purty, is what the beefy guy in the red pickup shouted from the top of the drive. He had to say it three times, partly because of the distance, partly because of the drawl, and partly because I was preoccupied with thoughts of how to murder our contractor without getting into too much trouble.

But the big guy is so typical of the kind of reception we experience from strangers in Asheville. This is just a genuinely friendly place. We do hope you'll come for a visit once the house is finally done and the body disposed of.