A Day on the Road...

Yesterday, we took a “skip day” and went on our weekly bike ride in the mountains of North Carolina. Every time we go up, we try to explore different winding back roads. The kind of back roads you wouldn’t want to break down on. I’m not saying this because of the old scary notion the movie Deliverance put in your mind about southern back roads, “Paddle faster, I hear banjo music,” but because they are desolate, miles from the nearest home and unlikely to get a cell phone signal.

It’s hard to think of banjo music and breaking down when it’s the perfect temperature, the wind is at your back, the sun is in your face and warming your bare shoulders. What I did think about was, moonshine. I envisioned the hills filled with copper stills and bootleggers, and the pesky revenuers sneaking through the underbrush ready to demolish the still with a pickax.

The term moonshine goes back to a time when folks avoiding liquor authorities made their own booze by the light of the moon. This illicit spirit has also been called mountain dew (yes, you now know the soda reference), and white lightning. The term “moonshine” has a romantic, naughty ring to it that reminds you of two strappin’ good lookin’ boys in a souped up orange car called the General Lee helping out their poor old moonshinin’ Uncle Jesse.

Moonshine’s mystique is drawn in part from the danger people associate with it, but it’s reputation as an illegal and potentially hazardous elixar has little to do with why it is on the verge of earning mainstream respectability. It has less to do with mythology than drinkability.

Most do-it-yourselfers, stick to traditional recipes. The basics: boil the corn and let it ferment a few days. Then cook the "mash" in the still. As the vapors cool inside the contraption, alcohol runs out. A few make it from granulated sugar instead of grain.

The advise anyone will give you who brews it or has drank any amount of it will tell you, "If you take a big sip you'd have about three steps where you'd have to sit down or fall down.” At 190 or 200 proof, the brew has a bad kick. A little more than a big swig, you could instantly become knee walkin’ drunk, and we know depending who you are, that may not be a pretty picture!

It doesn’t matter to some that much of it doesn’t taste good or doesn’t have much taste. It’s like drinking EverClear, with an aftertaste somewhere between hominy, and stale wet cardboard. It’s one of those experiences one can't turn down, once.

We pulled into a one-pump station to gas up. A friendly old timer with a spirited sense of humor was drinking a tall glass of sweet tea in front of the old station and country store. We struck up a conversation as we drank our icy Mountain Dew’s about moonshine and some of the notorious bootleggers of the 20th century. He remembered a story of a young local moonshiner and a revenuer, “The young moonshiner told of how a tax man came up to him asked him where his family was. "At the still," he said. "Then he told he'd give me a dollar if I took him to the still," said the moonshiner, from Roanoke. The revenuer said he'd give him the dollar when he got back. "I had to tell him, 'Mister, you ain't comin' back.”

We laughed. He also informed us, moonshing was a serious business and Franklin County, NC has never been much ashamed of its long association with untaxed liquor. He went on to tell us about NASCAR Hall of Fame driver Junior Johnson was from this area and before becoming a racer he hauled moonshine on these very same mountain roads. I verified that when we got got home on the Internet and sure enough, he did, in an article written by Al Pearce:
“NASCAR Hall of Fame driver and team owner Junior Johnson won 47 poles and 50 races in his 11-year career, but he staunchly refused to go road racing until 1965, the year he quit driving. Johnson said this about his one start at Riverside, Calif.: "That place was right up my alley. I was driving for Ford, and they kept trying to get me out there because I was familiar with roads. (Before becoming a racer, Johnson hauled moonshine on mountain roads in western North Carolina). But I wouldn't go because" its right-hand turns "exposed the driver to the wall.”

I’m sure there are more NASCAR drivers with the same history as Junior, and there’s still a whole lot of moonshin’ goin’ on in these parts of the South. With the biggest issue being, the state/federal misses out on taxes that it would collect through a legal purchase.

It was great conversation with the old gentleman and it was the icing on the cake of a perfect mountain ride. Until next time…Peace.

Today's Thoughts...On Writing

I read a story that was published on a social network recently. It was about an incident that happened when this person was a teenager. I knew the people involved in the historical account and I was disturbed that something so personal was shared without theirs, or their family’s permission. I questioned the motives behind it, and even they thought it was an innocent reflection, it helped me think about my own boundaries, my own ethics of writing. I do not write, even in my own journal, about any of the painful aspects of the lives of my adult children or friends. I may note some publicly known fact such as a serious illness, or some joyful achievement or even a funny episode in family life. Even for that, however, I ask their permission. Their lives are sacred and have no place on my pages. Other people in my life, however, do sometimes find themselves on my pages. They are fictionalized so much that only the person in question might guess. I have changed the gender, age, description, and place of residence; I have altered histories, and distorted the truth on purpose, all for the sake of disguise.

On the other hand, my life is an open book. Someone someday, may read it, whether it’s published or not. There are some things that I do not write anywhere, not even in my journal. Everyone’s boundaries are their own, what would be intolerable self-revelation to one person is of no consequence to another. I know the danger of keeping a journal; someone may know who I really am. Or, more accurately, someone may know who I am in the moments I am writing, and mistakenly think I am like that all the time. Because sadness drives me to write on many occasions more than celebration steers me, someone reading my journal would conclude I am sad much more of the time than is true.

From the time I was nine years old and wrote my first poem, writing has been the way I survive. It has been my “art” form and it was the way I fit in. Franz Kafka said, “Writing means revealing oneself to excess.” I strive to leave judgment to others and try to be as honest as I can. In one way or another, all writing is a confession. Confession or vulnerability masked and revealed in the voice of words.

I know that my writing has drawn people to me, and it has pushed people away. I know that the “me” revealed on my pages is not always the “me” that is seen across a table at a local pub or deli. I know that some of my friends can’t deal with the more complicated “me” they meet on my pages. I can’t help that. They can understand or they choose not to, it’s their choice.

Peace...

Today's Confession...My "Black Dog"

This is in response to the numerous emails and inquiries where I've been...I hope this answers all your questions...Thanks for hanging in there with me.

"Black Dog" was Churchill's name for his depression, and as is true with all metaphors, it speaks volumes. The nickname implies both familiarity and an attempt at mastery, because while that dog may sink his fangs into one's person every now and then, he's still, after all, only a dog, and he can be persuaded sometimes and locked up other times.

People tend to forget that an individual who has depression or any other disorder is actually a person underneath the chaos and despair. On my worst days, it feels as if the depression consumes me and takes over my entire body. I am filled with negative thoughts and pessimistic views. I am irritable, impulsive, anxious, and sometimes I am sarcastic even to those I love. I can even become narcissistic, wonder why people don’t see me as this wonderful person, and become aggravated when they want nothing to do with me.

I can hear myself when I’m angry and depressed, and I can hear the words, tone, and pitch of what I’m saying and on a subconscious level, I cringe at what I’m doing. I know that I’m wrong and I know that I’m being hurtful, but at the same time, I cannot stop. It’s like having an out of body experience where you are floating above and watching every movement and hearing every word, but are powerless to stop. It’s the worst feeling in the world, when you know that you are being unreasonable and could be hurting someone’s feelings. That is why I have learned to keep my mouth shut until I can calm down and have an adult conversation with someone. However, even that can get me into trouble because I am seen as being disrespectful and defiant and as someone who doesn’t seem to have the patience to deal with a situation tactfully.

The list of names reads like an honor roll of the past two centuries, names like Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill and Vincent Van Gogh, Peter Ilych Tchaikovsky, Charles Dickens, Ernest Hemingway, Stephen Hawking, and Buzz Aldrin, just to name a few.

All suffered from either depression or bipolar disorder (manic-depression). The list goes on: Virginia Woolf, Judy Garland, Jack London, Marylin Monroe, Sylvia Plath, Mike Wallace, Kurt Cobain ...

Perhaps depression and manic-depression has a way of coaxing out the most noble and creative and visionary in some. If so, God must have a very twisted sense of humor. I think of the brilliant works produced under this muse, and I also think of the promising lives cut tragically short: Virginia Woolf's body fished out of the water, weighted down by stones, Van Gogh cradled in the arms of his brother at age 37, a thousand Starry Nights never to be painted, Sylvia Plath with the gas on and her kids in the next room, Marilyn Monroe found in a state of partial rigor mortis, forever young.

Sure, it's nice to know that depressives and manic depressives can accomplish great things, but then I consider the terrible tolls they all had to pay, and realize we are guilty of glamorizing the horrific, and in the process we diminish the tragedy this disorder has left in its wake.

I have learned to live with this thing inside me, even with the knowledge that it could very well bring me down at a moment's notice and show me no mercy. It has brought me closer to God and myself and my fellow human beings. But it has also reduced me to nothing and taken away everything I had. It has left me for dead, powerless to fight, feeling abandoned by both God and man.

And so, I must accept what I am, the bad, as well as the good, the ridiculous as well as the sublime. Maybe then, in my own way that is unique to me, I can feel as though I fit in. Maybe then, after nearly a lifetime of feeling different, I can say for the first time - and say it like I really mean it - that I am truly normal.

Peace...