Well, hallelujah! Monday came for me again and I'm digging the fact that Friday is out there waiting on me too. I guess I need to make one thing clear, I do indeed like Friday as much as the next guy, but the plain and simple truth is, I'm thankful for every day I get these days. I'm not in bad health according to my doctor, but the law of averages is all around us, Murphy's law must be given some sort of credence, the law of gravity, the law of diminishing returns, add in the plain old law (the kind with guns and sirens) and someday the law is going to catch up with you. Maybe a combination of laws mentioned just prior to this sentence will get you, but there will be a law that catches you in the end. Like the law that clearly states that you can't live forever. I'll say it again, enjoy the one life you've been given from on high, cause at some point, the law is gonna getcha.
So, my lovely bride and I completed our four day trip in an attempt to visit various and sundry places from our separate youths. It was kind of a theme vacation if you will, visiting small (or formerly small) hamlets throughout the north Georgia mountains, the Tennessee mountains, and last but not least, the North Carolina mountains where I will eventually have a combination of laws catch up with me and I'll get chucked in the clay. I think the way ole Curtis Lowe got buried is the best way to describe meeting your end. He must have been from my beloved South, cause Lynyrd Skynyrd didn't sing "the ole preacher said some words and they chucked him in the dirt". He said clay, and not because it rhymed. If you've never had your ass whipped by one of your parents for ruining a new article of clothing for playin, wrasslin', or fighting in the red clay, then you ain't from around here.
The red clay of my home state of Georgia, and the south has put many a rambunctious young man under the strap. It's the kind of stain that Tide detergent and Clorox Bleach combined won't get out. Those two products are so southern, they were sponsors of two separate NASCAR teams for as long as I watched the event. I'm guessing that neither product is painted down the sides of a race car anymore because it costs too stinkin much to advertise that way. it gotten to where mere seconds in front of any camera equals adverstising dollars spent. I guess Yankees got involved in the sport and up and ruined it. Girl drivers, Restrictor plates...heck, the first time I heard that term I figured it was a dish that wouldn't allow you to put a lot of food on it. Next thing you know, Kotex will have a pink car bringing up the rear as a sign of diversity.
I'll swerve back into vacation land now, just to tell you this one undeniable truth. You can't go back home. We visited my future hometown of Murphy, North Carolina on the first leg of our trip. It is still a cool little town that can be reached from Atlanta, via 285, then 75 North, 575 North that turns into Georgia 515 limited access (meaning no over head bridges), then left on Georgia 60 and right at Mineral Bluff to the road that runs into Murphy. Two and one half hours of of exceptionally nice driving. I still remember, as a kid, seeing the skyline of Atlanta disappearing on the horizon and anticipating seeing the foothills of the Appalachian mountains, affectionately called the "Smokies" for the misty fog the mountains produce sometimes all day, but primarily in the mornings. You'd think there were large campfires burning all over every mountain the smoke is so thick at times. It was beautiful to me as a kid as it rose up on the horizon. And it still is to a man over fifty.
What it meant to me was I was getting closer to my grandma's house. The place where I could do no wrong, every body was happy to see each other, we ate like kings (no restrictor plate eating there, ever), there was a creek, a giant barn full of fresh hay to jump in, mountains letting off smoke as far as the eye could see... If John Denver could have spent some time there, he'd have re written "Almost Heaven, West Virginia", and thrown North Carolina in the mix. I guess that was his Murphy. We all have one, or at least I hope you do. Everyone should have one. It's the one place I go and still get excited to be. I call it my full exhale spot, the place where I fully unclench.
We'll talk about it some more tomorrow.
Happy Monday!
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