MONTICELLO

By Greg Evans

My young daughter and I were traveling south on the interstate 81 when we decided to take a detour and visit the famous homestead of Thomas Jefferson. We were on our way back to our cabin high in the Great Smoky Mountains, when the urge to deviate from the trip sent me off the exit and nearly off the road into a dense thicket. Oddly enough, while traveling along, I believe route 64 east, there are no signs for the great Monticello. I wasn’t that surprised, nothing in the south surprises me all that much. Very little makes any sense and the more I try to rationalize it all the harder it is for me to find more than three hours of sleep on any given night. After nearly thirty-three minutes of winding mountain roads and out-of-control big rigs, we took an exit for Charlottesville, Virginia, because I knew from looking on a map that Monticello was near the city. City, it was no bigger than a small town. We drove up a hill, bore right and found ourselves practically on the quad at the University of Virginia. It was a beautiful campus but I had no desire to hang around. I have two degrees from two great universities and I wasn’t looking to participate in another, at least not yet. I sped off the campus nearly dissolving the lives of a couple hippy kids, turned right and headed up the narrow road into the heart of Charlottesville which I found to be an ugly little place, except for about forty feet downtown by the statue.

          With the greatest of difficulty we finally found our way onto the spiraling road leading up the mountain to where the immortal house stands. We parked, exited the car into a blanket of humidity and nearly 95 degree heat, purchased two family tour tickets and waited for the shuttle to take us up to the house. Mary was intrigued by the life-size statue of our third president and I took a great picture of her beside him. We reached the grounds with about five minutes to spare before our tour began. We met our guide and a few other families with young kids and the lady began giving us the history of Monticello which I found fascinating. Mary found the large front lawn much more interesting and ran around in circles howling like an Injun. Numerous groups were obviously disturbed and staring at the commotion. Mary then collapsed and lay sprawled out in the lawn, sweating profusely, gasping for breath and singing Beauty and the Beast songs. I was sure we were about to be thrown off the grounds. Instead they ignored my young hyperactive daughter and we entered the house. It was beautiful inside, and the most incredible house I have ever been too. To the left was a collection of Indian artifacts and weapons Lewis and Clark brought back from the Pacific Northwest and presented to Thomas Jefferson as a gift. There walls were covered in maps and beautiful oil paintings of Thomas Jefferson’s famous friends. He had numerous gadgets and instruments, thousands of volumes of literature, antlers, beautiful furniture and secret mechanisms in the house which astounded us. He designed the entire house. They could bring bottles of wine to the dining room from the wine cellar by way of an ingenious pulley system and communicate by an elaborate bell system. The whole house and property intrigued us and at one point Mary wanted me to put her down. I turned my back for a second and glanced over my shoulder in horror as she was rapidly scaling the wall via a 200 plus year-old window. I snatched her from the window like a lizard and hung on to her as she clawed desperately to be released. We entered the library where there was a chair that only Vice Presidents were allowed to sit in and Mary made a beeline for the chair as the room filled with gasps. The tour guide nearly took down a book case trying to cut her off but I was able to sweep her up flailing like a hunted quail and didn't let her down until we were out of the house and back in the yard. The garden was exceptional and I can only imagine what it looked like during Jefferson's lifetime. It was a great side trip and I look forward to returning once Mary gets a little older.

AL PETTEWAY AND AMY WHITE

By Greg Evans

I have to say the weather has been pretty freaky lately and I do know, because of science, that the planet is undergoing a geomagnetic polar shift which is why Appalachia is now experiencing tornados and heavy daily showers like a Guatemalan rainforest. Some say that eventually the Appalachian mountains will be sub-tropical. Fine with me. I wouldn't care if I never saw snow again for the rest of my days. Summertime in Appalachia is beautiful. The clear, fresh, warm mountain air and lush green forests. Birds and butterflies are everywhere, the sweet smell of fresh moss and trickling streams. I drift off with the wind to times past, when the world was smaller and the forests bigger, when the oceans were blue and green instead of brown. I walk through endless golden fields of wheat and meadows of crocuses.

I lived in cities for years, New York, Los Angeles, just outside Nashville and who knows where else? I'll tell you what, the skies were never as blue as they are here at the top of the world, high up in the clouds of the Appalachian Mountains. The bluest blue you could ever imagine, bluer than a Van Gogh painting, a blue that is so pure and vibrant you get a strange warm tingling feeling like you are flying, or that sensation of laying in a field far from any humanity without any shoes on, your eyes closed and the soft mountain breeze tickling the soles of your feet in the shade of a green apple tree on a warm summer's day. You can't put stuff like that into words, you have to experience it. A world full of little yellow inch worms.

Saw a show the other night, drove down, out of the mountains and along winding, narrow roads with hairpins turns and speeding trucks like being in Peru, and watched guitarist and banjoist Al Petteway and singer, harpist, guitarist, mandolinist and doboist Amy White, perform. It was an extraordinary show and the purity of the music was Appalachia. This couple comes from the east near the Flattop mountain in the Carolinas and showcased their mountain music with the precision, fluency and passion of Apelles painting a line. So in a small concert hall, a couple thousand people, dimmed lights, the clanging of flasks of peach moonshine and the scent of nearby peppermint chew wafting through the quiet crowd the music took us away, floating through the ancient hills and howling of raiding injuns, whispering waterfalls and swaying of Revolutionary War oaks tree branches we soared and swam through our own thoughts and memories, accompanied were we by incredible photographs of nature and mountain top views, photographs taken by Al and Amy. I was moved by the performance and I'm not moved by much. Another day high in the mountains of Appalachia.

SPRING IN APPALACHIA, GROWING AN ORANGE TREE IN THE MOUNTAINS

By Greg Evans

A song through the woods came to me, just past dark, I heard it softly, like a whippoorwill through the purple shadows and I knew it was coming from down yonder by the ole Brode's cabin so I followed the sound along the old creek bed. Little Annabel, I recognized her voice, pulling laundry off the line and folding it on the picnic table in front of the little white barn, once a black smith's shop before eighteen hundred and sixty-one, still standing. It was Pretty Saro, in perfect pitch I imagine, and I sat down where I was on a dried rotten log with my cigar, tipped my hat up so I could see the stars and hummed quietly along. It's nice on a warm night, to sit and enjoy a fine smoke and listen to a pretty song. The sounds of the forest alive, crickets and evening birds, the scuttle of little rodents and whispering of the wind. Throughout the mountains folks were out strolling and chatting and playing music from Clinch River to Roan Mountain. Haven't had but one such evening in maybe seven or eight months. It was a hard winter this year. Since last October we have only been out of the mountains once. During the day the bumble bees and wasps zipping about in every direction, though neither is an aggressor and thus I can enjoy the weather comfortably alongside them. With all the heavy rains and snows we're due for a mass hatching of blood thirty mosquiters ready to enjoy a fat spring meal. I'll have to erect a few torches to chase them away or else I'll be filled with welts in the duration it takes to have a cigar. It wasn't until today that I can confidently say, spring is now here and darn it if it didn't take long enough to arrive! I have decided that this year I am going to plant a couple orange trees. As I have mentioned before I have three lemon trees that I have been growing for two years and they are as healthy as ever. The secret is to take what people who claim to be "experts" say with a grain of salt. I am not saying they don't know what they are talking about, but there are more than one way to grow a nice tropical fruit plant in the Appalachian Mountains. The first thing is that you need a pot or a empty plastic coffee container, cleaned of course. The tropical fruit plants won't grow well in the natural clay and come winter they will obviously die. Next, simply purchase a fruit from your local market, like a lemon, lime or orange. Purchase some regular fertilized soil and put it into whatever pot you are going to do your growing. Then remove a few seeds, at least three just in case one or two don't grow (not all seeds will grow regardless of how careful and attentive you are), bury no more than two per pot, about two inches under the soil. Water them well the first day and then a little every day after until they begin to sprout. Then make sure they get plenty of sunlight (southern exposure) because, don't forget! They are tropical plants. They will grow slowly so don't be alarmed. During warm and hot days and nights they can be kept outside but come autumn and winter they must be brought in doors. They will go dormant, which means they won't grow much at all but they will survive if you keep them watered and in front of a window that gets a lot of sunlight. They will survived for years if you care for them well.

SPRING, WORCESTERSHIRE SAUCE, TAMARIND TREE

By Greg Evans

The day was full of colors and light, 70 degrees and the mountain mists burned away before noon. I kept the lemon trees and the mini palm outside over night and I'm sure they grew an inch after today. The wife purchased two hanging inpatients which I hung beneath the awning on a porch. The wine now flows through my blood and the cigar tobacco sticky on the corners of my mouth, a sweet bitter flavor. Evening has set in and I can see Orion's belt in the direct western sky from my perch on the top of world. The bats twisting and twirling still at this hour, dogs barking in the distance, guns being fired down in the hollow. Venison for a week I suppose, or maybe squirrel. Went shooting the other day at the range. Talked with an old timer from across the mountain. Said he's about done with this darn winter and at 82-years-old said he can sniff the coming spring and sure enough spring has arrived. The blossoms on the dog wood trees opened full this morning decorating the hillsides and valleys with gorgeous whites, lavender, rose and purple. My perennials are beginning to flower and I believe I even saw a mosquito sneaking around but it's too early in the season for them. By mid summer this place is so full of mosquitos if you walk through the woods in shorts and a t-shirt you look like a case of the small pox. Aside from playing with the little one I worked all day long, from the morning until I threw burgers and hot dogs onto the grill. I took the hamburger meat and mixed it with chopped white onion, minced garlic, parsley, Italian seasoning, black pepper and Worcestershire sauce before packing into paddies. I then grill them on the top level of the grill at about 400 for about 30 minutes and they were fantastic. Did you know that Worcestershire sauce was actually created by accident by two chemists in Worcester England in the 1830's trying to create a good curry. They had made the sauce but it was too strong so they stored it in a factory and a year later when they were making room in the factory they tasted the sauce and it had fermented and mellowed and was tasty and thus a wonderful hamburger sauce was had. In 1838 the first bottles were put on the market called "Lea and Perrins Worcestershire sauce." The ingredients according to an article by Fay Schlesinger on Nov. 3 2009 from Daily Mail online, are malt vinegar (from barely), salt, sugar, molasses, spirit vinegar, anchovies, onions, tamarind extract, garlic, spice and flavoring (cloves, lemon, pickles, soy sauce and peppers). By the way, Tamarind is a tree in the Fabaceae family indigenous to tropical Africa. It also grows wild in South Asia and Arabia particularly in the country of Oman, though it is thought to have been transported there by people. It was introduced to Mexico and Hawaii in the 16th and 17th century respectively. It is now grown in many nations with a tropical climate. The tamarind flowers with red and yellow flowers. It is a busy tree with evergreen leaves and reaches heights between forty and sixty feet. Tamarind has a sweet and sour taste and is high in vitamin B and calcium.

NIGHTTIME STARS, WRITING, PEOPLE

The chilly air has returned but from what I have read it is not permanent. It is extra dark tonight, heavy overcast and the moon ceased to exist. I don't like not being able to see the stars. I love to stare up at the various constellations and know that they were the same ones that Homer and Shakespeare wrote about, Apelles and Van Gogh drew, that Galileo and Copernicus studied, that Mozart saw from his carriage traveling along the rustic dirt roads from show to show. History's great minds and lives and events all took place beneath the stars that I stare at. The beams of starlight that hit my eyes are old, older than time, I wonder sometimes how old? How much of the very distant past do we really understand? I wonder sometimes if Atlantis was a real place and if so, what did the people think of the constellations? How many did they see that have since burned out and no longer exist for our lifetime? And then I get to thinking about life and how much actually occurs in the span of our short lives and how many emotions we feel, happiness and sadness, fear and frustration, rage and betrayal, hopelessness and pure confidence, euphoria and despair. It is incredible and hard to reason through in only one night, in only one life. Why did say, John Kennedy Toole who worked so hard on his writing, die only to then have it become internationally read? Or why did someone like Van Gogh who spent his meager funds on paint and canvass producing some of the worlds most beautiful art die and then the work becomes immortal, or Mozart who was in desperate financial straits in his life go on to sell over a billion dollars worth of compositions. Not to be morbid tonight but the stars in general get the wheels in my head running on over drive. Sometimes there are so many thoughts it's hard for my pen to keep up. Some days and nights I write so frantically my hand begins to cramp and then just plain paralyzes from over work. When it comes to writing for example I have a compulsion. I have an innate desire, more like an animalistic, primal urge and no matter how much I write I never feel satisfied and thus I have to write more and more. I could sit and write for twelve hours a day, seven days a week and after the twelve hours each day I would try to sneak in some more writing time that night, but of course that isn't feasible because life happens and there are responsibilities that require attention. Not to mention I enjoy the time I get to spend with my family. I hear deer in the woods but I can't see them, the darkness is blacker than oil, thicker than tar and smells of wet leaves and curiosity. Everywhere I sit, every road I drive along and every sidewalk I wander down I see and feel the past, never the future. I wonder if other people are like me? I don't think it is a bad thing, it makes me realize I am a living. I think one of the most challenging things in the world is to put what you see and hear, smell and taste and think down on paper so that it makes some ounce of sense. People don't realize how hard it is to write and how much work it takes. Next to raising children, writing is the hardest thing I have ever done. I mentioned it before and I will say it again, I love to read and learn about people's lives and the most interesting aspects to me, are the mundane everyday parts of people's lives that most people wouldn't ordinarily notice or prefer to read about. I love to read, for example, diaries when they talk about what they ate that morning and the birds they watched during a stroll to the library. I remember reading about Glenn Gould one evening, the piano player, who used to go to a Canadian restaurant at night, I think in Toronto but I can't recall, and he would always order scrambled eggs. I love that. Another time I watched an interview with John Grisham the author who writes the legal thrillers and he stated how he drinks the same kind of coffee out of the same mug every morning. I like to see where people lived, I try and find actual pictures, and where they worked and if they used for example a type writer what kind it was and what it looked like. Someday I want to go and visit all the different places where different people who I find interesting lived and worked for example, William Faulkner in Oxford, Mississippi and Jackson Pollock in Springs, New York, Ernest Hemingway in Key West, Florida and Piggott, Arkansas, Archimede Seguso in Venice, Apelles in Sicyon, Van Gogh in St. Remy, Mozart in Salzburg, Galileo's villa at Arcetri, Cicero's hometown of Arpino, etc. That is just something that interests me. It's interesting the behavior and nature of people from all walks of life but particularly those who have something that drives them like a mad fog. Maybe that is because I have something that continually pushes me without restraint, the constant need to work, work, work, and yet the next day and the day after that there is still work to be done, and though the work is tedious and I often fall severely ill from lack of sleep and too much coffee, I find the work very enjoyable. Maybe my need to constantly study other people comes from a basic need for me to understand myself. I have strengths and weaknesses and I am very aware of both of them though I shant bore you. Despite the chilly night I have enjoyed very much a cigar and a glass of wine. In about fifteen minutes I will brew a pot of coffee and work. It is starting to get late and the lights from cabins in the distant mountains are beginning to extinguish. Let's hope tomorrow has less wind and more sunshine.

WHEN IT RAINS IN THE MOUNTAINS, CARUSO

It's a funny thing in the mountains, when it rains it seems everybody and their mother heads out to the car for a drive. The roads, all the roads, even small backwoods short cuts are packed with people out driving. Should the sun suddenly come out 85% of the cars on the road would disappear. Today a desperate rain fell, saturating the landscape, the birds on the old oak trees out by the lake huddled together in clusters, the squirrels dashing and peeking out of their leafy nests. My jacket was a light blazer and I headed for the car through the drenching and found a small river separating me from my dry sanctuary of warmth. Unlike Moses I was not able to split the rapidly expanding sea before me and I was forced to wade the wretched stream and upon reaching my parked car I proceeded to remove the minnows that had taken refuge in my loafers. It is on those chilly, dreary days when the rain is determined, I like to turn on the song Caruso, because it's a song that makes me think of the rain in a romantic, poetic sense, falling through the fog into the mountains, like the rains I remember in the countryside of Tuscany. You turn up the rich tenor voice of Pavarotti or Bocelli, the thick, glassy blue and gray droplets plummeting down from the dark clouds enveloping the tops of the dark green mountains. The song is beautiful and nostalgic, cabins lit by candle light and warmed by wood stoves glow on the mountainsides like lanterns along a Venice canal at dusk.

MOUNTAINS AT NIGHT

Well I was driving home tonight, around 9:20 pm. It was dark and I was on an open road looking out at the mountains and the twinkling lights along the mountain slopes, like landing in an airplane and it was beautiful. I felt like I was reading a page of poetry. It reminded me of flying into Quito Ecuador at night and seeing the sparkling lights on the mountainsides like fire flies. One of my favorite things in the world is to fly, particularly at night and in a smaller plane, but I also like the jumbo jet. The only thing is that I feel a bit claustrophobic on large jets that are filled to capacity and people are sitting on top of you, hacking lung, reeking of cheap perfume and talking loudly about their boring lives which they feel is the most interesting thing since Reeses peanut butter cups. My last flight was incredible. I sat in the very last seat on the plane. The noise was so excruciatingly loud I couldn't hear anything but it was a steady rumble so I was able to concentrate on my book while sipping a twelve year old scotch. As the plane began to descend over the lush, warm landscape of Florida I shut off my small reading light and watched the lights of the world glimmering growing closer and closer.

There is something magical and remarkable about driving around the mountains early in the evening when the lights of people's homes are still burning bright and the warm balmy air of a peculiar winter are blowing through the window. In a way it is soothing, somewhat calming and times like those always send my mind reeling back in time to moments in life that I have experienced and in a way the sensation triggers brief mental flashes. It was a pleasant evening. I picked up my daughter and we spent the night watching tweety and sylvester until it was time for bed.