Update On My Next Novel

 

That is me in October 2001 at a special place I have written about a few times, Patton's Run on the Nantahala River in North Carolina.

As of this morning's edit, it appears this novel should be finished and out by late June barring any major life interruptions or unforeseen developments. The word count currently sits at 112,000 words which would be by far my longest book. The cuts have already been deep and I want to bring this book in at around 100,000 to 105,000 words max.

This is the end, spanning from 1995 to 2005. It contains all of the answers that I can ever provide about everything I have written about my family and life. I hope readers find it engaging, fun, mysterious, surprising, not too depressing and different. I have been open how I struggled with a period of serious depression to write this. There are some seriously ugly, shocking and sad moments in it, but humor finds its way through. The last chapter, Silent Bridges, fits this lifelong project.

Farewell to Robin, Oliver, Elliot, all of the characters from all of the books, the past and may they rest in my new written time capsule. This book is for Everett, Louisville, Paulding County, Baby X and all of the other hidden children.

Thank you for reading.

 

Asheville And Our Times

The Biltmore Estate. Photo by me, 1980s.

The last time I was in Asheville, North Carolina was in the late 1980s as a teenager. I was there with my parents and we did what most first-time visitors do in Asheville which was to tour the Biltmore Estate. It was much cheaper then and not the price equivalent of a day at Disney World in those days. It will not cease to amaze me the price the public will pay to tour the home of a rich person.

That was a long time ago, too long ago, and tourist attractions have changed with the times. Places now are events and experiences designed to be consumed as such. Try going to a museum without someone posing for a selfie in front of a painting you would like to admire in the moment. I remember when museums strictly forbade photography and security harassed patrons for even considering it. I shall never forget that incident from my childhood at the High in Atlanta when I was accosted for daring to stand an inch too close to a painting. I was scarred, I tell you.

Everything and every place is now cheapened to an experience that is a cross between a Chuck E. Cheese, a traveling carnival, an outlet mall and a theme park. Thank you and now please pay twenty-five dollars for this photo; we made you stand in line for. Places do not exist now solely for their beauty or history or maybe they do not generate enough cash flow to satisfy the greed of the owners. There must be distinctions of access between the masses and some years later we can brag to our cousin at Thanksgiving that we skipped the lines with a VIP All-Access, behind-the-scenes pass for which we paid a month's mortgage. The cousin will surely be impressed and will have seen the posts on social media and posted a jealous emoticon. We need neon signs that tell ourselves and everybody else that we are having fun and that food is a fetish worthy of sexy photography while we pose for a fake smiling selfie in front of a mural with a craft brew in hand – gosh, are not we a special and hammy lot! Hashtag that! None of it is genuine, it is done to present an image to our “followers.” In these times, we are all in the public relations business. Not only have the attractions changed, but society changed too.

 

The 1920 art-deco Asheville city hall.

Asheville is more than the Biltmore, I think or I hope it is. It must be, with over 94,000 people living in the city limits and they cannot all be a Vanderbilt. Can they? After spending time there as an adult, I came away with different impressions though they remain distant and unclear as though I had met a person from the past for a reunion over lunch. I was never close friends with that person, I kind of knew them, could remember fuzzy details about them, but never had a firm opinion on what I thought of them. Asheville was like that; a murky, nonthreatening fast food fish sandwich.

After my recent trip to Asheville I came away without a full understanding of the city, but my impression was that it did feel smaller than a city its size. It reminded me of a teenage boy wearing his father's clothes that needed to be grown into. The city has what every city has today that wants to appear trendy: breweries, breweries, breweries, coffee shops and colorful cartoony murals that either strive for a deeper social meaning or exist to be Instagrammed as a selfie background – you know the ones where we see more of your face than what you are actually standing in front of. The downtown scene seemed like a cliché.

 

The Grove Arcade built in the 1920s. Atlanta had one of these too (built in 1917), but of course it was torn down in 1964. Progress and all that. Photos by me, March 2023.

One night I sat at dinner with my back to a table of women in their fifties and sixties. They were locals and the conversation was mostly about religion and charity work. I am a notorious eavesdropper. My country fried steak with gravy came and I nibbled it. The women were waiting on one more person to join them before they ordered more than tea and sodas. One woman said, “You'll love my niece, everyone does. She should be here any minute; she works at Biltmore.”

The inescapable Vanderbilts appeared at dinner.

I tuned out their conversation until the niece arrived. She was a woman in her late twenties. The waitress was eager to get this party moving along, took their orders and then the table went through a round of prayers.

My fork and knife sliced through my steak and I did not fall in love with the niece that was inches behind me. I did not even get a whiff of her fragrance.

 

Probably a Vanderbilt. Photo by me, March 2023.

I have entered the invisible age or mercifully I have existed in that space for most of my life, but I am truly living there now. I am on the wrong side of the clock of life, where I can sit unnoticed by the young – the beggars are another matter as they have pinpoint vision, but seem unable to hear the word no. I sat outside the hotel one morning, sipping coffee and shooting Bach into my ears through my earbuds. I was jump-starting my brain; it takes longer these years for the gray matter to function in the morning with the fog of melatonin a hazy veil that lifts in small increments like a stubborn shade.

A young man came out of the hotel and sat twelve feet away. His music, the music made in labs with lyrics generated by Mad Libs, begins to blast. The young are immune from ear buds or headphones, they need their music surrounding them and everybody else to project their self-image. I was a teenager once, but we had boom boxes, car stereos and of course our music was real music.

I gave him an accusatory squint, but he ignored it and I increased the volume of my injection of Bach. Ah, soma! Hotel mornings are disorienting with coffee that never is as good as home, puffy-faced strangers, half-dressed and with bed head leaning over their phones in search of something more entertaining than their reality – the next experience, the next dose of dopamine.

I did recently have a fine cup of coffee at a Bloomingdale's cafe at the Mall of Millennia in Orlando, but that is another tale for another time.

In the time I was in Asheville, I turned fifty years old, I put on my invisibility cloak that is a permanent one. The cloak came with an AARP application and welcome card stuffed inside the pocket. I am on the wrong side of time where the years ahead are shorter than what is behind. I could get depressed about that, but that would be like getting depressed about another Dollar General opening down the road – it is undeniable and inevitable. I raise a lighter into the air to my youth, torch it and sing along to Bon Jovi's I'll Be There For You swaying back and forth. I understand those lyrics, “these five words I swear to you.”

Ah soma...

The regular kind of graffiti, not the touristy, social messaging mural kind. Photo by me, March 2023.

A 1920 art-deco gem turned food hall. Photo by me, March 2023.

As I looked at the sign I could hear the voice of Georgia native Sterling Holloway as the Cheshire cat. Photo by me, March 2023.

Kress buildings are kind of a thing with me, I have photographed them in various cities. Photo by me, March 2023.

I wandered around downtown Asheville on a cool early evening through the streets bounded by Patton Avenue on the south and Broadway to the east. Reviews on the internet said this was a hip area and there was a Hotel Indigo so it must be. There were unique shops, restaurants, bars and enough people to not make it feel desolate. I enjoyed the human-scaled architecture that had survived the ages and the general grit that had not been pressure washed into the gutter. I found Lexington Park antiques on Walnut Street interesting in a grungy and dusty way and rummaged in there for too long. After a time spent walking the streets and browsing shops I felt I was missing some cool place that was always just around the corner and I never found. 

 

If everything in Atlanta is Peachtree, then everything in Asheville is Vanderbilt. Photo by me, March 2023.

 

Asheville, you are one elusive creature.

 

Rusted and vine covered machines outside the Antique Tobacco Barn. Photo by me, March 2023.

Antiques shopping was why I was in Asheville and I enjoyed shopping at a large place south of downtown called the Antique Tobacco Barn.

Hi yo Goldie! Photo by me, March 2023.

Over the past few months and in three states, I have been seeing these metal horse clocks. I saw the first one in 2022 at an antique store in Monroe, Georgia. I was so taken by their tackiness that I wanted one, but it was grossly overpriced. I have since seen them more reasonably priced at other antique stores and online. I am patiently waiting to find the right one for my office. I was so curious about these horse clocks that began appearing before me that I did some internet searching. These clocks were novelty clocks often made by the United Clock Company, that is the brand I have been finding, and were mantle clocks made during the 1940s and 50s. Some refer to these clocks as “carnival clocks” as they were often the top prize that could be won at a carnival booth. I have noticed that these horse clocks have sometimes had their bases replaced with stone or wood and not the original metal.

 

Ripped from history. Photo by me, March 2023.

It will never not stop me cold whenever I come across family photos for sale in an antique store. There are some fragments of lives that are too precious, too private to ever be sold and those are family photos. I would rather see them shredded, thrown away, burned or donated to a museum collection than sold to strangers looking for a bargain. The context and history of the photo are lost and it is likely to be stuck to a refrigerator with a six dollar magnet from some experience as decoration.

 

Photos by me, March 2023.

There were some interesting pieces of furniture and decorative objects. I would gladly return here.

Leaving Asheville and the mountains around it. Photo by me, March 2023.

I left Asheville with more than I came and thank you for the memories elusive, Vanderbilt, craft brew drenched city. I left not feeling like I knew the city any better and in closing, it did not feel like it had any connection to the mountains surrounding it.

 

Weather Be Damned

The Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Photo by me, December 1985.

---

This was originally published elsewhere on March 9, 2019. This is an updated and edited version.

---

D

ecember of 1985 my parents and I were driving through the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina and made periodic stops to admire the scenery and stretch our legs. The weather was cold and wet and it was not far from freezing as the rain drops were slow to fall like thick tears from the nude limbs of the trees. I spent so much time outdoors in this type of weather as a child either in Georgia or North Carolina or Tennessee that I thrived in it. Perhaps this is partly the reason why, besides being born in the wettest month in Georgia, I harbor a fondness for cold, foggy and rainy weather. Put me in a jacket, a wool sweater, thick socks and a pair of boots and I am ready to charge into the foulest and most miserable weather.

 
It was around this time that I became more interested in photography. I had my third camera by then, a point and shoot Kodak 35 mm, it was nothing terribly special as far as cameras go, but I bought it with my own money. My first camera was a Polaroid OneStep that I inherited from my parents and my second was a beautiful Polaroid SX-70 Land Camera given to me by an uncle. I liked taking pictures of everything around me except people. Most of my allowance in those years was spent on film and film developing. This was when the hobby of photography bit me hard and deep.

We were driving through Swain County, North Carolina on U.S. Highway 19/ U.S. 74 which parallels portions of the Nantahala River in the Nantahala National Forest. This was an area we had spent lots of time in during the latter half of the 1980s. We would sight-see, take walks, raft the Nantahala River a couple of times and sometimes just drive up for the day from Georgia to loaf in the North Carolina mountains. As a teenager in high school and in college in my early twenties, I returned here several times alone to think about life and make decisions.

The rugged landscape of western North Carolina on a topography map.

Coming back south, in December 1985, along the highway we stopped at a roadside picnic area, the Ferebee Memorial picnic area and launch site, next to the river. We stopped to look at the water and stretch our legs before heading home. In the cold and rain I snapped a few photos of the scenery.

This spot is at a bend in the Nantahala River wedged narrowly between two sharp ridges of mountains. One ridge ascends to 3,600 feet in elevation and the other ridge is more steep reaching to over 5,000 feet in elevation. These two ridges form the Nantahala Gorge and on the highest ridge is the Appalachian Trail as it runs from Georgia to Maine.

The Nantahala River in North Carolina. Photo be my, December 1985.

Of the two remaining photos from that moment, one is taken from the banks of the Nantahala River. I feel cold just looking at all those dark colors of the drenched terrain.

We were the only people around and the mountains were all ours. There were no houses around, no cars passing as the tourists had better places to be on a dreary December day. What I recall most from that moment was not the numbing cold but the heavy silence disturbed only by the sound of the river.

The Nantahala Gorge. Photo by me, December 1985.

I snapped one photo of a mountain towering over the hardwood trees in the foreground. I was probably thinking at the time that I would have loved to have been up there exploring the endless woods, weather be damned. It was difficult to keep me out of the woods as kid and had it been just me that day I would have wandered around more than I did. My parents were ready to travel on in the warmth of the car.

For twenty years I did not have most of the photos I shot as a child or teenager. When I left home in 1995, I left my photography at my childhood house in the care of my father. I should not use "care" because he would throw away much of what I shot or lose them in moving them between his various houses in three states. What I did manage to rescue from him in 2015 was found in a plastic storage bin in the top of his barn in Alabama. My photos had been exposed to the damaging elements to heat and moisture and many were stuck together or not salvageable. The negatives I had kept were gone too. Fortunately,  some were saved, perhaps a few hundred photos. Many were scratched or faded like the scar on my left wrist that is always hidden by my watch band.
 

My juvenile photography consisted mostly of landscapes. I seldom shot photos of people. There was a good reason that I did not often turn my camera on people. I remember saying to my mother that I did not like photographing people when she asked. I did not like photographing people because I would not have liked what I would have seen, such as the misery of my parents. The storms of my family were too miserable even for me to set to film.

 

I wish I had shot more photos of the people in my life then,  especially my friends and the people close to me. Photographs of the people that were a part of my secrets would be nice to see later in life, but if I had photographed them then maybe I would not have hid those secrets for so long.

It was not until some time in the 1990s that I began to enjoy photographing people along with nature. By the mid 90s, I was photographing cities. In the 2000s it was nightlife, nature, cities and people. After almost forty years of putting a camera to my eye and pressing a button to record a millisecond of time, I would give my mother a different answer if I could. I would answer that the storms were so significant that my mind could not forget what the camera did not see. Weather be damned.