He Ain't Heavy's (although he used to be), He's My Barbecue Chef.

This is the summer of "No Moss for Sandy and Bob." I say that because we will be on the go traveling to the ends of the earth visiting relatives, attending weddings and generally annoying all of our acquaintences. We kicked off the summer with our annual California soiree' (see my last post) followed closely by our annual Jonesville/Ewing trip. There was not so much Jonesville this year as my Uncle Tom, now 88 years old, had some medical issues this past year and moved in with his sister in Ewing. Now Uncle Tom was never one with whom you could rap about the subtleties of nuclear physics or Euclidean geometry , but this medical episode essentially reduced his mental faclities to that of most congressman. No wait, that's not fair to Uncle Tom.

Most of the rest of our time was spent largely on sitting around the sweltering patio (they have air conditioning, but my relatives being over 65, are allergic to temperatures below 120 degrees, so they don't turn it on) rehashing family lore that has been heard several thousand times and listening to Uncle Tom remind us that "the tree across the way, was trimmed and is now beautiful. He reminded us roughly every 90 seconds during the course of Tuesday and Wednesday (we suspect mild dementia setting in).

The countryside is as picturesque as anywhere and the food so good that you tend to forget the poverty, oppressive summer heat and lack of anything remotely entertaining to do, short of sweating gum drops and making the occaisional trip into the booming metropolis that is Middlesboro, KY to spend the day shopping at the WalMart (buying nothing) cruising their "mall" and dining at the gourmet KFC it boasts. Also Ewing has finally entered the "cyber age". Yes, if you go down to the local "Pizza Plus" restaurant, motto "Sure we have WiFi. You just need to sit by that one window booth there and you can get the funeral parlors connection from up the hill!", you can surf the internet while enjoying pizza or the plus.

Also, we spent the better part of 2 years, er, um hours, in a place where what passes for "social networking" is something called the Tazewell Flea Market. You really haven't lived until you've spent the better part of a sweltering, fetid and odiferous day, scouring the effluvia of hillbilly life for what my relatives call "a good buy." Picture if you will, about 6 hundred wooden shacks and shanties more or less in rows, crammed into a half-acre of pure Tennessee dirt and made of rotting wood, filthy tar paper and maybe a roof made from the discarded metal of an 1948 Buick. Crank up the temperature to about 180 degrees with humidity to match, populate the area with several thousand clones of Junior Samples, Jethro Bodine and Minnie Pearl, toss in the odd goat, sheep or miscellaneous fowl and one porta potty for the lot, and voila, you have truly the most depressing congregation of God's creatures ever assembled. To complete the experience you pick your way through the rows of shanty stalls surveying everything from bootleg DVDs to used underwear, autographed by Willis Mumford, complete with skid marks, serenaded all the while by crying infants, braying goats and Merle Haggard. I never thought I'd say this but the experience is absolutely worse than "a sharp stick in the eye."

As bad as all that was, it was more than made up for by lunch at a place on the Powell River named "Heavy's" that serves some of the best barbecued ribs I have ever had. The place is named after the owner and chef, who is no longer heavy though he used to be according to the history lesson we were given by the waitress, Daisy Mae something or other. To get there you have to drive roughly 5 miles through the set of "Deliverance" until you come to what looks like something excommunicated from the Flea Market for being a little too uppity (it has actual indoor plumbing). It is essentially a wooden cabin, with a kitchen and patio overlooking the sluggish, brown Powell River. On the various walls of the place are stapled dollar bills in various stages of decay, which have been autographed by patrons and hung for posterity. Why? I'll never know. After tasting the ribs, I knew why so many people would hazard the 5mile journey for a taste (Have you noticed that all of our trips seem to center around food? I blame Sandy).

Speaking of Sandy, she and I, on a more adventurous day, decided to try and take a short walk on a trail in the mountains. It was early morning and my sister Cheryl having sensibly declined exploration of any kind, decided to give our little adventure a miss. It was on this trek, straight up for the most part until it went straight down, looking for a place called the Sand Cave, that I discovered a heretofore little known fact about my spouse of 35 years. Somewhere along the line, probably as a preschool teacher, she has become an officienado of poop. This obsession turned into a blessing as it cut our climb short, as Sandy keenly went into "unusual poop spotting" mode. Seeing an unusual dropping on the trail (smallish and containing what appeared to be berry seeds) she became convinced, based on her vast experience of rabbit, deer, coyote and various other wildlife waste products, that these were "bear droppings." She was very sure of this because in the course of her career, she hadn't encountered this kind of dropping before and ergo, it must be bear crap, proving once and for all and very scientifically, bears do indeed shit in the woods (bet you didn't see that coming from a mile away)!

It was at this point we decided, discretion being the better part of total lunacy and idiotic foolhardiness to cut our "walk in the woods" short and return to an area of relative safety. Sandy then shifted gears into "I'm scared out of my mind, so I'm going to pick up this twig to defend myself from any bears weighing less than 4 ounces that might attack while we scurry back to our car and singing in a loud clear voice so as not to surprise any of the furry carnivores, the theme song from 'Shaft'" mode. It was then that I knew any jury on the planet would have acquitted any bear (even one with priors) or myself for justifiable homicide.

Obviously we escaped with our hides and the rest of the visit was pretty uneventful. So if you want to see God's Country I highly recommend you give Southwestern Virginia a visit. Just remember your Merle Haggard CD's and a portable defibrilator.

Love
Dad