Bottle Rockets and Bears

OK, like any red-blooded American boy, I keep a stash of fireworks, and today that paid off pretty well. First let me start off by explaining, we keep our garbage can in the garage with the door always closed. Although we don’t see them very often, bears do wander our neighborhood, and their favorite past-time is overturning garbage cans. If bears held the Olympic Games, the events would revolve around lifting up, flipping over or prying open trash receptacles.

Today, I planned to do some touch-up paint work on the back of the house. I opened up the garage and found the paint can I wanted and stirred the paint a bit and grabbed a paint brush. As I walked around to the back of my house, I heard this huge crash emanating from the garage. I thought the ladder that I had propped up near the door had fallen over, which would be bad thing since it most likely would’ve landed on my car. What I found was worse, much worse.

I walked out to the edge of our deck where I can see down into the garage, and the ladder hadn’t fallen but instead a black bear had overturned our rolling garbage can and was nosing through the contents. I shouted and clapped my hands, which by the way is what you’re supposed to do to startle a bear. The bear looked up at me, gave me a look of disdain as if to say, “You pale-skinned hairless fool, what are you going to do about it?”

The bear, however, was ignorant of my fireworks arsenal so I ran around to a cabinet where I keep a stash of bottle rockets for such bear incursions. I grabbed a bundle of them, the finest of course Black Cat, which rarely ever have a dud. I found a lighter and considered myself ready for a bear hunt.

By the time, I ran back around the house and peered down from the safety of the deck, which is about 10 feet above the driveway, the bear had pulled some of the garbage to the edge of the garage and was preparing for a feast. I lit a rocket and lobbed it at the bear like a small hand grenade. It hit the pavement and skipped into the garage. The ensuing explosion reverberated out and the bear beat a hasty retreat. I decided to harass the bear further and circled around the back of the house and as I came around to the front, I lobbed another rocket, which forced the bear to retreat back toward the driveway.

 I walked cautiously around the corner of the house and there the bear stood maybe 10 feet away. He was good sized boar maybe weighing in at 300 lbs. I shouted and he retreated, but he stopped after about 30 feet and began to stare me down—not a good thing because he wasn’t giving ground—which is the first sign he’s thinking of charging.

 Of course, I had no intention of letting him turn the tables on me, so I lit another rocket and tossed it. It flew wide by a good 15 feet, but the rocket's report panicked the bear, and he bolted for the safety of the woods. I threw another for good measure ... ka-boom! And he disappeared into the forest, gone—hopefully for good. Bears are smart and have excellent memories, they usually don't like to return to places that have caused them some consternation in the past. Here’s hoping this bear learned his lesson.

The Deadman's Hand

Two pair, black aces and eights, is the dead man’s hand for those who don’t know. James Butler Hickok, better known as Wild Bill, supposedly held those cards when he was shot in the back of the head playing poker at Nutall & Mann’s Number 10 Saloon in Deadwood, South Dakota.

More than 120 years later, the shooting of Wild Bill is still re-enacted daily in the saloon every few hours in the afternoons and evenings during the summer tourist season. I wasn’t aware of  this fact until Wild Bill himself asked if I’d like to be the dealer while he got his head blowed off. Of course, I agreed. Who in their right mind would ever pass up a chance to play poker with the Old West’s most famous gunman and then watch him die a gruesome and violent death?

When Wild Bill requested my assistance, I was sitting at the bar imbibing in a cold beer after doing a bit of gambling myself. It was late afternoon and the bat-wing doors of saloon cast elongated shadows across the uneven and worn wooden floor. Nutall & Mann’s is a fairly authentic western saloon, and dates back to the mid-1880s. However, the existing stone and brick building was built after a fire swept through Deadwood Gulch and leveled most of the town’s rickety wood structures.

The current saloon was completed about 10 years after Wild Bill was gunned down by a teenage boy named Jack McCall. After sneaking up and blasting Hickok in the back of the head from point blank range, McCall told the shocked bystanders that his mother had killed herself because of Wild Bill’s misdeeds.

Turns out that was a lie, and McCall’s mother was some two-bit whore in Cheyenne who had met Hickok maybe once and died either of a drug overdose or syphilis, probably both. McCall was actually the worst kind of murderous villain since he only craved fame. McCall thought he’d be famous for killing Wild Bill and that people would pay to hear his story. Lucky for him, he wasn’t strung up immediately. A kangaroo court of prospectors and gamblers acquitted McCall of murder. The “court” seemed to buy the avenging his dead mother defense. Most historians believe the jurors were actually very pissed at Wild Bill for consistently beating them at poker and taking their money.

McCall left Deadwood a day or two after his “acquittal” and was later arrested and tried in Cheyenne by a real court. The second trial didn’t turn out very well for McCall, and he was found guilty of homicide. His fame was pretty short lived and was hanged a few weeks before his 20^th birthday.

Hickok was buried in Deadwood, and people seem to think it was his home. Truth is, Hickok had come to town about three weeks before he was shot. He came to gamble because stories had spread of easy pickings from prospectors who had flocked to South Dakota’s Black Hills. They came in a gold rush that started when an U.S. Army expedition led by Lt. Col. George Custer discovered gold. It was a rich strike, and the Homestake Gold Mine, just a couple miles up Whitewood Creek from Deadwood, eventually became the deepest gold mine in the United States and was still producing gold until it shut down in 2004.

Custer’s gold discovery indirectly led to his own death. As mining boom towns like Deadwood began to spring up in the Black Hills, which was sacred land to the Lakota and Cheyenne, hundreds of Indians bolted from their reservations. White men had once again broached a treaty that guaranteed the Black Hills would remain Indian territory in perpetuity. The renegade Indians eventually banded together in a huge encampment along the Greasy Grass River (known to whites as the Little Bighorn). Custer found them there in late June 1876 … and that’s a whole other story.

When I arrived in Deadwood almost 120 years to the day that Custer met his end, the town had made a rousing rebound. For years, you couldn’t gamble or find an open saloon in Deadwood—which was strangling the town slowly to death. Finally the town’s leaders realized they had to revel in Deadwood’s rough-and-rowdy past and barter that reputation into tourism dollars.

Saloons and gambling returned to Deadwood Gulch and so did the tourists—and that was good thing for me because when I hit town, I had about 10 bucks cash in my pocket and for some reason my bank card had stopped working. The card’s magnetic strip might’ve been compromised by a slip and fall into the plunge pool at the base of a waterfall in the Big Horn Mountains of Wyoming.

Still, I was able to acquire a room and buy dinner in downtown Deadwood using my Amex card, but I had no access to easy cash from an ATM. After a truly western style dinner of steak, baked beans and beer, I set off down Deadwood’s main street and stepped into one of the saloons advertising black jack and poker. The “casino” so to speak was a back room of another “authentic” western saloon.

I laid down all the cash I had for $10 in chips and within an hour had won about $150—which is quite a bit better than an ATM. I tend to be a sensible gambler and knew that my luck wouldn’t hold out much longer—so I left while the getting was still good.

I had passed Nutall & Mann’s on my way to the gambling hall … for some strange reason there’s no gambling allowed in probably the most famous Deadwood saloon. Still I wanted to soak in the history, and I took a seat at the end of the bar and ordered a long-necked bottle of Bud. And that’s when Wild Bill stepped up and asked if I would help recreate his assassination.

I’ve never been one to turn down an offer to participate in a bit of weirdness, so I readily agreed. The Wild Bill who approached me bore no resemblance to the actual James Butler Hickok. He had curly medium-length hair and a goatee. He wore jeans and a western style red and blue shirt with white piping on the collar and cuffs and a black leather waistcoat. He had a leather gunbelt and holster that held a single ivory-handled peacemaker – aka the Colt .45. His hat was a black Stetson with a braided silver hatband.

The real Wild Bill had long light-brown hair that cascaded over his shoulders and a mustache that drooped below his jawline. He wore a sombero type hat with a very wide brim and low crown with the brim tilted down to one side. Wild Bill was a bit of a clothes horse and liked to wear a red and white houndstooth checkered silk vest with a black wool frock coat. He never once wore a gun belt or holster and tucked his two Navy .44 Colts into a red sash he tied around his waist.

Still I was happy to comply with this errant Wild Bill, as he told me that I would be the dealer for the fatal hand of poker. I shook hands with the other re-enactors as we sat at a poker table in the middle of the saloon. A narration of Wild Bill’s demise played over the bar’s sound system as I dealt the Deadman’s hand to the pretend Bill. The faux Wild Bill jumped up from the table a couple of times and drew his six-shooter and pointed it at the faux Jack McCall. But then he holstered his gun and sat back down—allowing “Jack” to stand behind him. When Jack fired the gun, I admit I jumped. It was loud … a blank of course but still loud. I could see that Wild Bill had ear plugs—I wish he would’ve shared.

Wild Bill sprawled on the floor, and every one at the poker table jumped up and scattered. My ears were ringing a bit, and I got up to run, which seemed the prudent thing to do. But Jack pointed his six-shooter at me and shouted “Sit the hell down.”

Then I remembered, my primary duty in all this was to turn the cards over and show all the tourists standing about in their t-shirts, shorts and flip flops … black aces and eights, the Deadman’s hand.

A Musical Time Machine

OK, I time-traveled a bit on Friday night. Well, my attitude did at least. My longtime friend Mr. Chip and his wife Anna coaxed me out of my normal Friday routines to go to Pisgah Brewing and check out a Dead/Phish cover band that I had never heard of—but then again, I don’t hear about many touring bands nowadays. It’s just not part of my radar, and my attentions are happily focused elsewhere … like scanning doggie DNA reports. You know important stuff.

I’m not a huge Dead cover band kind of follower or listener either. I preferred the real deal, and I admit from the late 1970s until Jerry’s passing in 1995, it was a minor obsession. Well maybe a major obsession, I saw 40-plus shows all over the U.S. and nearly a dozen Jerry Garcia Band shows through those years.

So I'm kind of jaded when it comes to bands attempting to mimick the Grateful Dead, and my expectations were nil when I chauffeured my friends over to Pisgah. Now, if you’ve never been to Pisgah Brewing, it can be a tough place to find. The brewery is housed in an old furniture factory on the western edge of Black Mountain. It takes a few turns and unexpected twists to get there, and you can easily miss the turn just past a small Free Will Baptist church and into a parking lot that can be described in one word … industrial.

The old guard shack still sits at the edge of the property, decrepit and shiny with crystals of broken glass. I’ve known the guys who run Pisgah for a few years now, and they have upgraded the place considerably. They expanded their brew house by knocking down walls and replacing the aging dairy equipment they used for brewing vats to much larger stainless steel tanks and kettles. I was there when they first started construction on the tasting room—where the bands now play. The large bay doors in the tasting room now open to a graveled courtyard, fire pit and Quonset hut game room. Simply put, it is a very funky place.

The guys who run Pisgah are all Deadhead types, so it surprises me none that they knew about this band Hyryder from Indianapolis. These guys were good, and their music is what set me to time traveling a bit. Often nostalgia can be a double-edged sword, and reminiscing can leave you at loss pining for things that once were.

I didn’t experience that though, this was much different. The band played the music that I was so familiar with, but it sounded and felt different. It was alive and in the present, and I think that’s no easy task when you cover an iconic band like the Grateful Dead. I think the music woke me up a bit and to start thinking about how to embrace the past and make it work for us in the present and the future.

Mystery Solved ... Sort Of

I  just received the DNA analysis of Beau, and drum roll please … he’s a Soft-Coated Wheaten Terrier, Keeshond, Shih Tzu mix. Of those three breeds, I was familiar only with Shih Tzus.

Shih Tzus, I know are fairly common, I’ve seen many of them before. One named Tripod lived just up the street from us on Sunset Drive in Alexandria. Tripod as you might guess was missing a leg, I think from a bout of cancer or maybe it was an unfortunate automotive encounter. I never really knew.

But he was a happy pleasant dog who had no idea he was missing a limb. I like to think Beau has similar traits from his ancestry. The other two breeds mentioned in the report, I have no clue about and had never heard of them until I opened the analysis report.

These just aren’t two breeds that roll off the tongue or you point out on the street and say, “Ahhh, yes there goes a Soft-Coated Wheaten, such lovely dogs don’t you think?” or encounter an owner by saying, “Well I see you have Keeshond there, I hear they're pleasant dogs but just a bit barky.”

So, how did these, what I believe to be, relatively obscure dog breeds find each other in the rough-and-tumble world of doggie dating and mingle together to become Beau? This is the new mystery of Beau, and one that will probably never been solved.

 

I’ve always thought he was a pretty unique dog, and this definitely confirms it.

A Torn-Down Palace

Nothing’s left of the house where I grew up.

It was demolished a couple of years ago for reasons, I’ve never clearly understood. All I know is the guy who built this monstrosity of a faux Chateau next door bought my family’s old house and then bulldozed it into the dirt.

Driving down Valley Brook Road still looks much the same until you reach the cul-de-sac. The little knoll where the house sat looks so forlorn now and small, so small. The house seemed so big to me when I was kid. But as I aged it grew progressively smaller and just seemed to recede quietly into the hillside.

After the house was torn down, my sister salvaged a few decorative bricks from one of the patios. I have that brick sitting near the entrance to my garage now—a reminder of a home that once was.

The house was no architectural marvel just a typical split-level ranch—very plain and kind of ugly by today’s standards. Construction on the house started in 1959, and we moved in June of 1960. I was three years old, and it was the only home I knew until I moved away from Charlotte for good in 1988. Even though I did spend time in Chapel Hill and worked in Atlanta for a couple of years out of college, 7545 Valley Brook Rd. was my homestead—a place I could always return and be at home.

My father died in the house the first of May 1995. In many ways after that point, the house ceased being home for me. My mother sold the house in 2004 and moved to a retirement center in Northeast Charlotte—a good 25-minute drive and worlds away from where I grew up.

While it was an very ordinary looking house, the yard was spectacular. From the back of the house, it looked like parkland—green and well-manicured. And I did most of the yard work to make it that way.

The entire yard was huge nearly two-and-a-half acres, and it took five hours to cut the grass using a riding mower with a 48-inch mowing deck. I probably spent two years of my life cumlatively cutting that grass … and at least a year repairing broken-down lawn mowers.

All of the yard, even the house, was flood-prone. I had no input into where my parents built our family home, but my older brother did. He wanted a creek in the yard. Well we ended up with two creeks.

McAlpine Creek, one of the largest in Mecklenburg County, was about 75 yards out our back door. A small tributary to McAlpine, bordered the south end of the yard. Both creeks would flood after heavy rains.

After really big storms, we would be marooned. Flood waters would fill the cul-de-sac and edge up our driveway—making it impossible to drive out. Three times water actually entered the house. The final and biggest flood of all was in late August the year my father died. A microburst from a tropical storm cell sent water rushing down the street like a brown tsunami. The lower level of the house ended up knee-deep with  the yucky brown waters of McAlpine Creek.

Since the land is in a flood zone, nothing will ever be built where the house once stood. This pleases me. Mecklenburg County actually condemned the land and took it from the guy who bought the house and razed it. I believe the recession may have been unkind to him, because I saw the Chateau monstrosity was for sale last time I drove down Valley Brook Road.

The yard still looks like a park and has become part of the McAlpine Greenway. It’s very fitting for such a lovely and memorable place.

Lawrence and the Holy Polaroid

I hadn’t thought of Lawrence A. Guay in years, until a recent e-mail from my friend Jim Metesky jarred that memory loose.

In his e-mail, Jim quoted a short passage from what he and I consider to be the greatest letter written during the 20^th Century. Lawrence authored this rambling, disjointed and yet extraordinarily lyric masterpiece slightly more than 30 years ago in which he beseeched my older brother and his wife to help him market a holy Polaroid photo of Jesus Christ.

My brother, his wife and a friend had come up with the potentially million-dollar idea of printing and marketing Shroud of Turin tablecloths. The payoff could've been huge with a possible whole line of shroud products, beach towels, bed sheets and bath mats. Problem was the idea was ahead of its time with no Internet to market it. An ad in the National Enquirer was probably the best option at the time, but the response was disappointedly tepid except for the letter from Mr. Guay.

In his letter, Lawrence explained in some detail how his bedroom ceiling opened one night as he slept, and Jesus appeared. He described how he was first frightened by the appearance of misty golden clouds and bright shining light as trumpets sounded a fanfare and a chorus of angels sang.

He wrote that dozens of “somewhat shrubs” (Lawrence’s words) flitted about on heavenly wings and joined in singing the glory of Jesus. The square footage of his bedroom ceiling must’ve been the size of a tennis court to accommodate such a heavenly host. Amongst all this angelic carousing, Jesus appeared, spoke to Lawrence in a calm and quiet voice and handed him a Polaroid photo. Jesus said the photo would offer proof that he was still watching over his earthly flock, and Lawrence’s mission was to spread the gospel of the Polaroid.

The Shroud of Turin ad somehow struck a chord with Lawrence who must’ve thought he had discovered his marketing soul mates. A follow-up phone call to Lawrence didn’t reveal much, just that he obviously hadn’t shared his sacred photograph with his mother. He agreed to send a copy of the photo, but the Xerox copy was very blurry and looked more like a Shetland Pony than our Lord and Savior.

We never heard from Lawrence A. Guay again, and even now I have to wonder if the Polaroid existed and what if it were actually signed. Just imagine what an autographed photo of Jesus could be worth.

Jim’s e-mail set me to thinking about Lawrence again, and I Googled his name. It isn’t a common name, but one or two Larry Guay’s are lurking about on Facebook. One Google hit, however, was quite intriguing. Lawrence A. Guay Sr. is a former evangelical minister from Southern Maine. The postmark on Lawrence’s letter was from Portland, Maine. Lawrence Sr. is now in his early 80s and a GOP member of the New Hampshire State Senate from a district that sits right on the Maine border.

I wondered if it could be a coincidence or possible relation. If it is a relation maybe even his father, then poetic symmetry is such a beautiful thing.

Beau, Dawg of Mystery

We could soon solve the mystery of Beau.

Beau is a rescue hound. He came into our lives six years ago, when we picked him up from a rescue group. Maybe we should’ve named him Vlad, since he came from Transylvania County. But “Beau” does suit him well. We tend to call him Beau-Beau, and as I say it now his freakishly long tail just starts thwapping against the floor.

We have no idea what kind of dog Beau is. He is … well simply put an American dog. Not too long ago, we took Beau and our Yorkie Ivy to Savannah. I totally expected people to stop and ooh and ahh over the cuteness of Ivy. But instead people stopped and asked me about Beau.

“What kind of dog is he?” is the usual question. And frankly, I don’t have a good answer. I usually say: “he’s a mutt,” “a mixed breed” or “just unique.”

Beau’s vet told me once that he’s some sort of terrier probably Jack Russell mixed with something “very hairy.” Heather, the vet, also calls Beau a “terrorist,” cause frankly, he can be a bit cranky. She once called him “a land shark” as he barked and snapped at her aides. More than once, the vet's aides have confidently told me, “Oh we can handle him, he’s not that big.” Only to have them, five minutes later appear and sheepishly ask, “Mr. Leonard, could you help us back here?”

Beau really is a good dog. He can be a sweet puppy and loves certain people. He totally loses bladder control when people, whom he likes, visit, and he has peed on them just from pure glee. Some have been lucky to have only their feet irrigated, while others haven’t been so fortunate.

Beau is an inside dog who loves his creature comforts, and prolonged stays in the outdoors appall him. We have taken him camping, and Beau’s reaction is: “Seriously, you really expect me to stay out here with no couch or arm chairs, what are we barbarians?”

So he usually ends up hanging in the car, lounging in the back seat and barking frantically at every bicycle and golf cart that happens by.

 

He’s a barker for sure, and the UPS truck can send him into hysterics. He's become pretty sedentary as he ages but still will run to the window and bark whenever I say: “Hey Beau, a rabbit" or "the president is outside.” He certainly knows what a rabbit is and goes ballistic when he sees one out the window.

I’m not so sure that he would recognize the president, but as often as Obama visits Asheville, Beau’s always ready for him. All this means is that Beau is one unique hound, and I finally broke down and ordered a doggie DNA test to find out just how unique.

Just What Is It About Polkville?

My daughter has a minor obsession with Polkville, N.C.

I’ve been driving through Polkville most of my life, and never really thought that much about it—until now. Polkville really isn’t much of a town. The 2010 census pegged the population at 544—a huge increase of nine people since 2000.

The tiny town has just one stop light where N.C. 226 and N.C 182 intersect. Just to the north of the stoplight, N.C. 10 forks off from 226, heading toward the even smaller town of Casar. I have been going up and down 226 about as long as I can remember. The highway is one of the nicest and most scenic drives in all of North Carolina as the road rolls and dips across the western edge of the Piedmont between Shelby and Marion.

To me, Polkville has always been where I was forced to slow down after driving through what always feels like a fluid and rapid dance through the undulating Golden Valley and past the sweeping curves and bluish haze of the South Mountains.

Heading south from Marion, Polkville rises up to greet you just past the eastern shoulder of Cherry Mountain. The highway flies up out of the narrow defile of Duncan’s Creek curves slightly to the right and straightens out on the broad flat plain that marks the point where mountainous Western N.C. ends and the Piedmont begins.

Polkville has the requisite Methodist and Baptist churches that nestle up close to the highway. The Methodist church looks a bit older with architecture, weathered bricks and spindly boxwoods that clearly date back to the 1920s—maybe even earlier. The Baptist Church was built later and possesses a late 50s or mid-60s ranch house feel to it.

All this fascinates my daughter. She looks at Polkville as the prototypical small town. But what puzzles her to no end is the apparent lack of a school or even a grocery store. I do believe Polkville has an elementary school tucked away off of N.C. 226, but retail is definitely limited to the two … maybe three combination gas station/convenience stores.

Houses are scattered haphazardly and sometimes sit at odd angles to 226—the main drag of Polkville. Some of the homes are well kept, while others look decrepit and weedy. Large rolling fields of winter wheat press against the tiny town from the south and east. To the north, freshly planted White Pine saplings stand in straight rows as the progressively older pines of the tree farm finger their way toward the base of Cherry Mountain.

Polkville has its own roller skating rink, but I’m not sure it’s actually even open for business. Broad red and white stripes painted in wavy lines across the corrugated tin building are fading from too many years sitting in the N.C. sun. Typically a lone pickup truck is parked in a parking lot of broken pavement and stagnating puddles.

I always pass through Polkville either thinking of the promise of barbecue and sweet tea in Shelby, which lies 15 miles further to the south and east, or the promise of the cool nights and rushing mountain streams of the Blue Ridge, which hover quietly on the northern and western horizons.

My daughter has other thoughts about Polkville though. She wonders who these people are and how they can sustain such a tiny town. She has asked me why did they ever build such a nice fire station, which is all gleaming steel and glass and close to a city block in length.

Her questions have led me to wonder about places that are so familiar to me, but I know so very little about.