Swimming With the Rest of the Bait.

There's nothing so humbling as thinking that you could soon be nothing more than something to be eaten by another creature. A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to be able to go snorkeling in the Dry Tortugas National Park in the Florida Keys. After having explored the area adjacent to the walls of Fort Jefferson, I asked a park ranger where the best examples of coral reef were located. She informed me that if I swam out to the area between buoys three and five, I would be well rewarded for the trip out.











The distance to these buoys seemed to be about 1/3 mile,so I set out. My wife had bought a cheap underwater film camera for our day in the park and I took this with me, pausing from time to time to snap a shot. Along the way I encountered quite a lot of fish and some nice coral formations. Pretty soon I was approaching the first of the buoys indicated by the ranger. However, looking down, I realized that I was swimming just above a shark that was longer than I was tall.

I'm marginally familiar with shark species, and I seemed to recall that this individual was a member of a rather innocuous breed of shark. However, because he was so large and because I was swimming so far from shore and alone (no other swimmers had ventured out so far), I began to feel like not so much more than something to be eaten by a big fish.



Stopping just long enough to take a couple of photos of this shark (a nurse shark, I've been told), I decided to head back to shallower waters closer to the foundation of Fort Jefferson, where I was only too happy to continue my snorkeling adventure. The better part of valor and all that.

Landsford Canal

Landsford Canal State Park (South Carolina)

Taken along the Catawba River.

After a twelve-hour shift on Saturday, my wife and I (along with a couple of hiking/kayaking pals) drove to nearby Landsford Canal State Park. Our main goal was to paddle our canoe along the Catawba River to see the vast expanses of Spider lilies that grow in the rocky shoals protected within the borders of the park, and to see the historic site of the old canal and lock system that allowed barges to bypass those same shoals in Colonial and post-Colonial days.

The rocky shoals just before the Spider lily habitat.

The highlight of the trip was, indeed, the huge expanses of Spider lilies blooming under a clear Carolina sky, but we also managed to see river otters, gar, various turtles, herons, red-winged blackbirds, and about two dozen or more water snakes.

The vast expanse of Spider lilies.

We got a very early start on our trip, arriving at the park at opening at 9:00 am. This was a good move, as the annual Spider lily Festival was today, so the park filled to capacity while we were on the river. The water level was a bit low, which made maneuvering a canoe a bit dicey over the rocky shoals. But we had a good time exploring the river and viewing the lilies.

Well worth the canoe trip to snap this shot.

By the time I got home, unloaded and stored the canoe and cleaned up, the physical activities of the past two days caught up with me and I collapsed to my mattress to spend the next few hours in quite a deep and restful sleep. I ain't young enough to keep going at those kinds of levels and shrug it off. So much for biking the nearby greenway I'd planned for later in the day.

Snakes abound in this park.

I highly recommend a visit to the Landsford Canal State Park if you're interested in pre-Colonial engineering or American history. In addition, of course, to just viewing a slice of nature in the Carolina Piedmont area.

Red-winged blackbird.

Part of the old canal and lock system that bypassed the rocky shoals. (Based on a sixteenth century design.)

Global Warming.

It strikes me that those who deny that global warming has been caused by the effects of Mankind burning fossil fuels are similar to those who claim that the Holocaust never happened. In fact, most of the folk who claim "there's no such thing as global warming" are among the numbers who claim Nazi Germany didn't initiate or engage in the mass murder of Jews and Slavs.

Mother Earth is Speaking

Every day the news gets worse.

I’m not talking about the latest wires concerning any war you might want to mention. Or the most recent Internet buzz about political turmoil. Or anything concerning any societal debate currently garnering the attention of the populace.

What I’m talking about is the health of the Planet. Each time I take a look, the news is worse than the day before. There is no large scale improvement as the human race rapidly eats everything in sight and shits anywhere is wants and belches indescribable toxins into the very air we all have to breathe and befouls every waterway and aquifer on our continents and in the crust upon which we move.

There is a current meme flittering about concerning population growth. Whereas once there was well-founded fear in the rampant explosion of the human populace, now we are told that the economy will collapse without new youths to fuel various welfare options for the aged (whether public or private). This is, to put it mildly, corporate bullshit. Once upon a time, it was religious leaders debating the sins of birth control. Now, the monsters who sit at the heads of our bloated corporate monstrosities are preaching the new Gospel of continued population growth. They’ve taken the place of old Popes and Priests and Ministers to ensure that they have a constant supply of customers. Not to some church or temple or mosque, but to their own every starving, very gaping maws fed by our endless consumerism.

So what are we going to do? While our atmosphere rebels against us? While the Earth gives up the good fight? While our seas stink and die?

We seem to be doing nothing. There are few voices speaking up to put an end to the insanity leading to the destruction of so many of the creatures with whom we share this globe. The Great Apes are our brothers, but their homes will be felled and plundered just as surely as the homes of races trampled underfoot by more advanced societies. The idea that they are persons should not even be argued. The idea that they deserve their own nations and preserves where they can live unmolested and unexploited by Homo sapiens should not even be the subject of debate. Let them have their peace and their survival.

Around us, animals are fading fast. Tasmania is losing their precious devil to some mysterious virus that causes cancer to erupt and kill them off. The government there is desperately seeking a last refuge for the tenacious little scavengers. An island redoubt where uninfected individuals can wait out the plague that is wiping out the species.

In the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic and Caribbean, a virus is afflicting all of the species of sea turtles there so that massive growths form on their bodies and flippers and heads, causing the animals to be unable to swim or to dive or to even see. Some few humans attempt to gather up these tumor-afflicted turtles and to surgically remove the growths and return the animals to their habitats. There is a single turtle hospital in the Florida Keys devoted exclusively to this struggle. But one group cannot stem the destruction of every type of sea turtle. A reaction to a problem spawned by the warming of the Earth and the fouling of the seas is no solution to the base problem.

Mother Earth is talking to us. With each species that is smothered out of existence we are delivered a dark warning of a fate, which ultimately awaits our own species if we refuse to take heed.

Deny the corporate greedheads what they consider their due. Fight them. Slow down. Take stock of their lies. Struggle against these new liars who are bound and determined to destroy everything by exploiting our own individual greeds to feed the black holes of their corporate hunger.

Only One Question.

One Question
By
James Robert Smith

I’d perc’d my own coffee,
put it in a mug
and left
for work
the insulated mug on my
right
I took a hard turn
too quickly, perhaps
and the mug spilled
hot coffee
on my thigh.
IT HURT!
Driving on, more slowly,
I dabbed at the
coffee
with a handy towel.
I had only one question:
“Who would I sue?”

A Good Month!

April 2007 was a good month for me.

My family and I had a grand time on our long vacation this year. We always have fun on our trips, especially since we bought our travel trailer. This year we took two weeks and headed down to the lower Florida Keys where we camped at Bahia Honda State Park. The highlight of our stay was a day-cruise to the Dry Tortugas National Park. While one of our less visited national parks, it’s easily one of our most beautiful.

I’ve had two inquiries into the movie rights for my novel, The Flock. No one has made a firm offer, yet. Hopefully one of the producers will take on the project.

I also got my first royalty statement for The Flock, and the book has done quite well. We got the initial royalty check, which Carole and I have decided to spend on something frivolous, such as a big, flat screen TV. We’ll go shopping this weekend.

My second Amazon Shorts appearance also took place this month. "For My Father's Brother's Children", a collaboration with Taboo alumnus L. Roy Aiken is now available via Amazon.com.

All in all, this has been a really good month.

At the Hemingway House in Key West.

(That guy really knew how to live!)

Life is...Good?

Things were looking really good.

I mean, really, really good.

I can’t recall the last time I was this happy. From about the time I was just out of high school until I was almost 40 years old, I was self-employed. Sometimes things were okay during those years, but when you own your own (very) small business, you’re always under a lot of stress. When the money’s good (and sometimes it was) you have enough to take some time off and go on a vacation. However, you can rarely do that, as the business often requires your constant presence so that it will continue to run efficiently and profitably.

For almost the past ten years, though, the Federal government has employed me. I have great benefits and decent pay and wonderful vacation time and a 401k, and so on. Things have been relatively good. I have time to do things and to go places. My position is filled when I’m not there, and the government isn’t going anywhere and it’s not going to shut down if I take a couple of weeks off.

When I’m not working for the Postal Service I can either be found writing novels, or reading, or backpacking, or camping and canoeing in a state or national park with my wife and son. I discovered a couple of years ago that I had enough disposable income to buy a travel trailer and a truck to pull it so that it could serve as a base camp for my trips into various hiking locations and wilderness areas.

Last week I was especially happy. I was planning a long vacation with my family to the Florida Keys where we would, among other things, visit the Dry Tortugas National Park. I was really relaxed and looking forward to the trip.

And then something really wonderful happened. Something most writers would see as an excuse to jump for joy and go into rapture. The chance at the brass ring that most people dream about and few see. I won’t say now what it is that happened, but be assured that I’m on needles and pins and will be until I (or my literary agent) gets the official word.

I think of it as a Woody Allen moment. I should be really happy, but now I’m stressed. I was in bliss getting ready for a long vacation, and now my thoughts be sidelined by what might be, what could be, what may very well come to be. It’ll be nagging at me until I get the final word one way or the other.

Stay tuned.

While There's Still Time...

A few folk have asked me about the title of this blog. It has nothing to do with the old poison termed hemlock, but rather refers to my favorite trees:


The Eastern and Carolina hemlock.


Go see them while you can.

In several sections of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park are stands of hemlock trees that were never cut when lumber companies were hacking their ways through our vast tracts of forest. These trees, while not on the order of California’s redwoods, are nonetheless impressive. To stand amidst them and look up at those evergreen branches, their trunks rising great all around, the ground carpeted in the redred rust of needles shed and coppering on the forest floor... Well, you have to go see it, I guess, to understand the experience. Words are not sufficient.




But if you want to see them, you’d better hurry.

A few decades ago, someone bringing Asian hemlocks to the area around Washington DC introduced a pest called the Hemlock wooly adelgid. A bug. Native to the Old World, this pernicious little whore is of a species that has no males. Like arthropod versions of the Tribble, they’re all female and all born with the ability to eat like a black hole and lay jillions of eggs that hatch into versions of their bitch mommas. America’s hemlocks have no resistance to them, and there is no native beetle to prey on the tiny bitches. So they have had their way with the hemlock forests of America’s east coast. The Park Service is doing what it can to stem the infestations, but it looks as if the hemlock is going to become as extinct as the American chestnut.

So. If you want to see these amazing stands of trees, then you’ll have to visit the Smokies within the next few years. After that, the trunks will still be standing, but they’ll be dead. I’ve asked folk who know where the most impressive stands are located in the park and I’ve been making an effort to see them over the past few years. Biologists are predicting the complete elimination of both the Eastern hemlock and the Carolina hemlock from our forests. If you’ve never seen a hemlock tree, you might not know how beautiful they are. They’re my favorite trees when I’m hiking and backpacking. Instantly recognizable. Always green, branches sheltering, growing very tall. I’ve seen hemlocks over 150 feet tall.

All around us, the Earth is telling us how sick it is. All around us. Our atmosphere is in turmoil, but those who control us claim otherwise. Our forests are sickening, but those who hold domain over them want to cut them down. Our wildlife is vanishing, but those who can help will not allow us to protect that life. The land itself is poisoned, but those who pull the strings won’t let us cleanse that land.

Do yourselves a favor and visit the hemlock forests of the Great Smoky Mountains and the Southeast before the only thing remaining of them are dead, drying husks that once were trees.

At Seven

At Seven
By
James Robert Smith

At seven years old
Your room is full of comic books
And Famous Monsters
And Creepy and Eerie
Magazines.

You gaze in wonder at
Creatures
Wrought by
Ditko
And Wood
And Frazetta
And Torres
And Crandall.

You wait for
Films from
Hammer,
RKO,
Universal.
Creatures that dwell
In darkness
From lost islands
Strange places
Other days.

And then.
At night.
Things come out.
October Country things.
That slither like
Fine silk
In the closet.
That crinkle like
Old pulp
On the shelves.
That blow
Not quite silently
Across your brow.

But there are rules
That keep you
Safe
You Seven-year-old.

Cover your eyes
And that which you
Cannot see cannot see
You.

Keep your fingers
And feet
From hanging over the
Abyss below your mattress
For they cannot
Invade that cotton
Territory.

And whatever
Whatever
Whatever you do.
Do not get up
In the night
In the dark
In the silence
Until first light
Brings dawn.

Only then is it safe
To read again
Tales by Archie Goodwin
Stories introduced by grinning
Ghouls and smiling zombies.
Only then is time
To watch
Wolfmen
And vampires
And Creatures from
Black Lagoons and
Things from Another World.
And time enough
For October Country
And tales etched on an
Illustrated Man.

Imagine

Imagine
By
James Robert Smith

Imagine being raised in a religious void.

There’s nothing there, in the past, no religion at all. Your parents have never said anything. You’ve never been to church or temple or mosque, that you can recall. And you’ve never been indoctrinated into any religion, at all.

You sing religious songs at school, from time to time. But “Jesus Loves Me” is just a song, because you don’t know who “Jesus” is. “Jesus Loves Me” might as well be “Don Gato” for all you know. Or care.

And then one day, in the third grade, you get a teacher who insists on someone in class getting up in front of the other kids before the day really begins, and reading a quote from the Holy Bible. This is the mid-60s, the days before anyone actually pushed a separation of Church and State. You don’t know what the Holy Bible is. It’s just another book, but with a black cover. Not as big as the dictionary, and surely not as interesting. But one day it’s your turn, and some of the other kids keep telling you to look for short verses. Something curt. Like, “Jesus wept”. But you can’t find “Jesus wept”, so you find something a couple of lines long and you read it.

No one discusses the verse. For God’s sake, we’re all only eight years old! The teacher, this Miss Goody, she just wants us reading a verse from The Book. For our own sakes. This is the same teacher who, when we’re singing religious songs with “Hellelujah” in it, won’t let us pronounce that final syllable, that “YAH” sound. ‘It’s a vulgar sound,’ she tells us. Just say “Hallelu”. So we drop the “YAH” and end with “Lou”, but we have to drag it out “looooooouuuuuuuuuu”. (And in my mind, I always added that “YAH”!) She’s a real hoot, this woman.

So now I begin to realize that there’s something out there called “religion”. And I realize there’s this thing people call “God”. And there’s this guy people call “Jesus”. And there are these nebulous jerks people call “The Twelve Apostles”. Like a group of some kind. Maybe like “The Dave Clark Five”. One kid in class walks around all puffed up with pride because he can name all twelve of them. I can’t name those twelve damned apostles, but I know the Beatles, and I know the seven original astronauts. I tell the other kids the seven original astronauts whenever they bring up the twelve apostles. This always succeeds in changing the subject pretty darned fast. Only one other kid in the class knows even six of the astronauts’ names. John Glenn and Gus Grissom are a lot more important to me than Paul and Peter.

However, the damage done, I start to ask about religion. The teacher explains to me about “God” and “Heaven” and, by golly, it all sounds pretty good to this eight-year-old. Then, a few days later, someone talks about “being saved”. I file that away, not wishing to display my ignorance. For, you see, I’ve been raised in a religious void. It’s amazing that my parents were able to do this. Just amazing.

This “being saved” stuff: it’s bothering me. What is it? I decide to ask my mom.

After school, I go into the kitchen. We have a sandwich bar in the kitchen, with bar stools. I nab me one of these stools and sit down at the bar. Behind me are windows that look out on the playground of my school where my third-grade teacher has begun to tell me about “God” and “Heaven” and “being saved”. (My parents are lucky, to live right next door to Oakhurst Elementary School and this son just has to walk out the door and about thirty yards and he’s in school each weekday morning.)

I’m sitting there at the bar. My mom’s just on the other side, where she usually is this time of day getting ready to make supper (“dinner”, we call it there in Atlanta). My head, as I say, is full of these cool thoughts of this loving “God” and this absolutely perfect placed called “Heaven” where you get to go when you die.

“What’s ‘being saved’ mean?” I ask my mom.

“Saved?” she asks, repeating me.

“Yeah. ‘Saved’. I heard it at school today.” She doesn’t ask me who told me about this, and I’ve always assumed she just automatically knew. I don’t volunteer it.

“Well, you have to be saved before you can get to Heaven.”

I sit there for a second. This doesn’t make sense. What about the unconditional love and all that stuff? Finally, I say, “You mean, you have to be saved before God will let you into Heaven?”

“Yes.” She goes on about her business of getting dinner ready.

“So, not just anyone can go to Heaven? Not everyone is allowed in?”

“That’s right. Not unless you’re saved.”

‘Damn! There are strings attached,’ I think. This is not right! At that moment, then and there, all the tumblers fell into place. All the circuits closed. All the switches flipped. That mother of all cornerstones, weighing as much as all of Logic, it went down with a solid and immovable thud.

“Then I don’t believe in God,” I told her. “I don’t believe in Heaven. It’s all a big lie, isn’t it?”

My mom stopped what she was doing (pouring water onto lentils in an enormous pressure cooker, as I recall). She wiped her hands dry on a blue towel, some green lentils clinging to her hands pink from hot water. “That’s right,” she said. “There’s no such thing as God or Heaven. Good for you.”

And that was that.

The next day, in class, the teacher asks whose turn it is to read from the Bible. I raise my hand. She points to me.

“I don’t want to read from the Bible any more,” I tell her.

“Why not,” she asks.

“Because I don’t believe in God,” I tell her.

Some of the kids gasp (some girls, smarter than most of us boys and realizing the implication). Most of the children don’t give a damn, because they’re only eight years old, for Pete’s sake. My teacher looks at me, then down at whatever workbook she’s perusing. And she says, “Well, Mr. Smith, you can be an atheist if you want to be.”

‘Atheist’. That’s a new one on me. I don’t ask her what it means, but I think I know. And there’s that dictionary sitting at the back of the room, by golly, and I plan to look it up as soon as I have a free moment.

Racist bastards.

For several wonderful years, I lived in a place called Gilmer County in the mountains of northeast Georgia. It was wonderful because I lived on 120 heavily forested acres that my parents had bought there. Our house was way down in a deep valley surrounded by old hardwood trees beside a spring-fed stream and our driveway was a mile long. Our nearest neighbor was two and a half miles distant. The nearest paved road three miles. The nearest public phone more than five miles away. This was the 70s, when there was only one option for phones: Ma Bell. They couldn’t figure a way to turn a profit by running that much line to our house, so they didn’t.

At any rate, I loved growing up there. I was so close to the hills and the trees and the wildlife I came to love. I even made a few friends there. But, largely, the people of Gilmer County were a horrid lot. It’s no wonder that James Dickey used Gilmer County as the template for the location of his monster-story, DELIVERANCE. And the people he wrote about in that novel…well, I lived among them, and he was not kidding, and he was definitely not writing in metaphor when he described those creeps.

But, because of the friends I did make in that place, and because of the beauty of the county, I still have some nice memories and some kind feelings for the place. So I found an online forum for the county seat of Gilmer County: Ellijayforum. I hooked up there with an eye toward finding out what had changed in the decades since I moved away, and what remained the same.

Sadly, what had remained the same is that a fair portion of the population remains (as then) hideously racist. Gilmer County was easily one of the most monstrously xenophobic places I’ve ever visited, and definitely the most xenophobic I’ve ever lived. A huge chunk of the native folk there are suspicious of every outsider, and distrustful of them to an almost pathological degree. And, of course, as the county then was 100% Anglo, the poisonous race hatred could almost be seen to be dripping from the rotted fangs of the inbred, mouth-breathing white boys.

At any rate, I started reading and posting at the Ellijayforums and quickly discovered that the place was crawling with the same racist assholes who had lived there when I was a kid. When I lived there, they would openly brag how they would (and did) murder anyone of color who tried to move into the county. Today, these same racist dogs have to put up with Hispanic citizens in their county, because the folk who run the apple orchards and other large businesses there want migrant laborers to settle down and fill the job vacancies. With the rich bringing in these new “coloreds”, the monster racists are left to gnash their green teeth and spew their venom. They soon were using the forum to scream about “the Mexicans” and the “brown-skins” and announce their “Minute Man” meetings.

Alas, the forum owner tried to clean up the board. Apparently they didn’t want the town to be known as a center of vile racism. But they couldn’t police the board fast enough, and so it was taken down, and now, this is what remains of it:

http://www.downtownellijay.com/forums/

Kind of a clever solution, but it’s sad to see them shut it down. So it goes. The bad guys can gather at the local Shoneys and Heil Hitler among themselves and commit buggery in the woods.



Let ‘em rot.

Afterlife.

I wrote this as a comment at another blog. Seems appropriate to post the brief bit here:

When I was in college just after high school, there was a retired Air Force pilot in one of my classes. He recounted how, during a heart operation, he KNEW that he was floating above the operating table looking down on his own body and the physicians and nurses.

A classmate said, "Man! You had an out of body experience!"

And the pilot said, "No, I had a goddamned hallucination, you dumbass.

I don't recall that pilot's name, but he remains foremost in my mind as a right thinker.

How to Embarrass Yourself

I am not known for having any tact. My lack of diplomacy often leads folk to think I'm a completely insensitive lout. This may be so, to some extent, but quite often my social missteps are just that: JRSmith stumbling along.

The following are a series of actual letters, the result being that I end up being a jerk. I have removed names and email addresses to protect the truly innocent. (And, yes, I could not possibly have made this up.)


06-12-2005

Folk,

The National Forest Website for North Carolina is the worst I've seen. Which is a shame, since the National Forests here in North Carolina have so much to offer and should have a superior Website to promote them.

I'm not sure what the budget is like, but the National Forests in other states seem to do a much better job of promoting the forests for recreation, and informing the public of the rewards of taking advantage of this valuable natural resource. I visit the National Forests in most of the states around North Carolina, and finding information on them is so much easier, and the information is provided in a simpler format that is also much easier on the eyes.

Sincerely,

James R. Smith
NC.



W-- G--/SRS/USDAFS
To
T-- S--/R8/USDAFS@FSNOTES
06/13/2005 10:43
cc
AM

Subject Fw: Website

Not sure who this is....

W-- G--, CGFM
Acting Administrative Officer
National Forests in North Carolina
Asheville, NC
Telephone ***-***-****

> ----- Forwarded by W-- G--/SRS/USDAFS on 06/13/2005 10:42 AM
-----
>
> Mailroom R8 North
> Carolina
> Sent by: V--
To
> Bogany W-- G--/SRS/USDAFS@FSNOTES
>
cc
>
> 06/13/2005 06:39
Subject
> AM Re: Website
----- Original Message -----
From: "T-- S--" <@fs.fed.us>
To:
Sent: Monday, June 13, 2005 12:55 PM
Subject: Fw: Website


We received your comment and I wanted to follow up with you; if you don't
mind taking a few minutes I would love to hear your suggestions for the
type of information you are looking for.

I look forward to hearing from you

T-- S--
Public Affairs Officer
***-***-****
>


"James Smith"
jsmith@
To
"T-- S--" <@fs.fed.us>
06/13/2005 04:38 cc
PM
Subject Re: Website


I don't have a lot of time just now, so I'll try to get my point across briefly.

To simplify matters, I would like to direct you to the Monongahela National Forest Website for a look at a superior method of informing citizens about the Forestlands they're looking for. This is one of the finest NFS websites I've used. One of the reasons my family goes at least once per year (and usually more often) to the West Virginia National Forest is because we can locate detailed information on their facilities online so easily.

Another good Website that I use often is the one for Jefferson/Washington National Forests in Virginia. This year my wife and I decided to stay at Beartree Recreation Area and were able to get a lot of information on that facility before we finalized our plans.

These are the kinds of sites the North Carolina National Forests need to have at work. I don't know if some college students at UNCAsheville are cobbling your Website together for college credits, but that's what it looks like. Frankly, it's graphically sophomoric, and trying to find information on specific areas in North Carolina's National Forests is a tough go at our Website.

Well, there it is, briefly.

If you want to look at the websites I mentioned, the one for Monongahela is
here:

http://www.fs.fed.us/r9/mnf/

And the one for Jefferson and George Washington National Forests is here:

http://www.fs.fed.us/r9/mnf/

Mount Rogers NRA is here:

http://www.fs.fed.us/r9/mnf/

And Beartree is here:

http://www.fs.fed.us/r8/gwj/mr/forest/recreation/campgrounds/beartree/index.shtml#top


I hope this helps. My wife and I had been planning a stay at Standing Indian
Campground, but finding information on that facility has been a tough go. The brief description on that fuzzy .pdf file along with two or three dozen other facilities was not a very good option for helping us make a decision. We had just about decided to head for West Virginia again, but are taking a chance and going blind to Standing Indian.

Sincerely,

James R. Smith
NC.


From: "T-- S--" <@fs.fed.us>
To: "James Smith"
Subject: Re: Website
Date: Tuesday, June 14, 2005 9:57 AM

thanks for the prompt feedback; actually I manage the website for the
forest but it is an "other duty as assigned" and I have no formal training
in area; guess it shows:)

I will be making a pitch next fiscal year for a position that among other
things can work on our web content; in the meantime we will keep chipping
away at adding content and improving navigation

T--


----- Original Message -----
From: James Smith
To: T-- S--
Sent: Tuesday, June 14, 2005 4:35 PM
Subject: Re: Website



----- Original Message -----
From: "T-- S--" <@fs.fed.us>
To: "James Smith"
Sent: Tuesday, June 14, 2005 9:53 AM
Subject: Re: Website


> thanks for the prompt feedback; actually I manage the website for the
> forest but it is an "other duty as assigned" and I have no formal training
> in area; guess it shows:)
>

Oy. Didn't mean to hurt anyone's feelings, but being blunt seemed to best way to get my ideas across in a short amount of time.

My wife and I had just been so frustrated trying to plan a National Forest vacation in our home state. We have no trouble planning a nice vacation in Georgia, WV, or VA, but now that we've decided to spend more time in the National Forests here in North Carolina, we're having a rough time getting the information we need.

Good luck on talking them into getting a full-time position to handle the Website. I understand budgets are tight in all of the Forests and Parks. Alas. National priorities are ass backward.

Take care. Sincerely,

James R. Smith
NC.

The Brown Geyser.

Me, the South Mountains, and a Virus.

As usual when I go hiking on my own, I got a late start. Carole wanted to use my truck to drive to work last night (she works nights in the maternity ward), so I had to wait until she got home at 8:00 am. Even though she got home at eight, sharp, I was still not ready and didn’t get underway until almost 9:00 pm. I had nothing to blame but my own dilapidated sense of punctuality. On the way out the door, she didn’t mention anything more about the nasty stomach virus that was going around at the hospital.

I drove uneventfully to South Mountains State Park, which is one of the closest mountain areas to my house. I was hiking by 11:00 am and had decided to first take the Chestnut Knob Trail to the peak to get some photos. The last time I’d been there it was rainy and I wasn’t able to get any good photographs. The first thing that I noted as I entered the park was that the new visitors center and office was not only completed, but open. So I pulled into the brand new parking lot and went inside where I grabbed a park map and asked a few questions of the ranger behind the big, huge, shiny, new counter. Yes, the new visitors center had been open for over a month. Yes, I could bring my travel trailer to the campground as long as the trailer was less than twenty-six feet in length. Yes, the Sawtooth Trail was closed, but only for those on horseback—hiking on foot was fine.

Sometime around the third question I realized that there was a rumbling deep down in my guts and that it wasn’t hunger and felt that I should visit the restroom facilities. Pretty darned quick.
Yes, the restrooms are open they’re down that hallway on your…I didn’t hear her say “right”, because I was moving pretty briskly down the hallway and the door was closing behind me before she could finish, I’m sure.

With suspicions that I was witnessing the nasty virus that was going around the hospital where my wife works, I evacuated my bowels quite noisily and with not a small amount of fragrance. I wiped and flushed and washed and feeling much better I left to drive to the trailhead for Chestnut Knob.





If you’ve never hiked that trail, it’s moderately steep with a gain in elevation of about 600 or 700 feet in about two miles. Not bad, but I know some people have a tough time with the climb. There’s a nice spot to stop along the way where you have a great view of the Jacob Fork Gorge in which High Shoals Falls is located. Today the sky was mildly overcast and the air was very clear so I had the best views from there that I’d ever seen. Strangely, in spite of the cold weather we’ve enjoyed the past two weeks, today had turned out extremely warm and I soon realized I could have easily worn shorts.

I stopped at the overlook for a while and took some shots. After a couple of photos, my stomach started rumbling again and with no small amount of pain I realized that I would have to once more clear the contents of my gut. I opened my daypack and found a roll of toilet paper (never leave home without backpacking toilet paper!) and cast about for a private spot in the woods where I would be least likely to shock anyone who might happen along.

Walking down slope slightly and behind some low pines, I decided that this was as good a place as any and dropped my trousers. Barely in time.

The bug-infested contents of my bowels exited at pretty much light speed I have to say. The mass hit the forest floor and drilled right through it and into the bedrock beneath and kept going. I’m sure if I check the website for the US Geological Survey, I will see that they recorded a mild tremor centered near Chestnut Knob at about noon on February 21. Roughly as that mass was passing through the molten iron core of the Earth, some neutrinos caught up with it and they all passed through the mantle together and appeared through the crust of the Himalayan plate at roughly the same time. The stuff didn’t quite have enough oomph left to reach escape velocity and fell back, and I suspect a Tibetan monk is now puzzling over the frozen, yellowish-brown mass that plummeted into his village.

Here in North Carolina I cleaned myself up and covered the small hole I’d drilled into Chestnut Knob with some leaves and dirt.

I had expected to encounter some other hikers, but all the day long I seemed to have the park pretty much to myself. After spending a few minutes at the overlook I pushed on to Chestnut Knob. Happily, the weather had completely cleared by the time I reach the Knob, and the views were spectacular. I ended up taking about 100 photos from this spot alone. It was a little after noon by this point and I was feeling much, much better, so I took out a sandwich and some water. After about half the sandwich, I realized Mr. Stomach Virus had not run its course and that I would once more have to find a private spot in which to squat. With great impetus I had to scramble down from the peak, discovering as I did so a great view of the rock tower on which I’d just been standing. This virus was serious business. The runs. The squirts. The brown geyser. I was one sick puppy and found myself merely relieved that no one else seemed to be interested in hiking the South Mountains on this unseasonably warm February weekday. There was that, at least, I pondered as I groaned and smelled up the World.

(If you ever stand at this point, you're on top of my toxic waste.)

Finally, though, I seemed to be rid of whatever it was that was ailing my innards. I’d only had a cup of coffee and two pieces of dry toast for breakfast, which I assumed was what had ended up in Tibet. And the partial sandwich had merely been the boost for this round. Yes, I was certain I was feeling much better and once I’d cleaned up, I went to my pack and drank some bottle water. It stayed inside me.



From there, I decided to take the Sawtooth Trail down to the Little River Trail and catch the Jacob Fork Trail and then the Short Trail back to the parking lot. I was totally unfamiliar with this section of the park so this was all new territory for me. Sadly, most of the terrain I traveled after leaving Chestnut Knob was pretty boring. The trails are mainly the old CCC roads from the 1930s, so they’re very wide and are basically auto roads that are open to horseback, bike, and foot travel. I didn’t see anyone else, though. I did walk through the Sawtooth Campground and it’s pretty much nothing but a wide grassy field with three metal fire pits and fire grates and a privy (which I happily did not have to use, thank Jove).


The trails were turning out to be very boring with the forest cover composed mainly of relatively young scrub oak and pines—not very pretty to look at. Soon after descending several hundred feet I came to a river crossing. Looking to my right, I could see that the stream went down a very long sliding rock. For some reason, the park service has chosen this point in the trail to dump brush and debris, and I had to push through this dried stuff to whack my way down below the sliding rock where I could take a nice photo. Once I’d done that, I made my way back to the trail and continued on.



Soon I was on the Little River Trail. As I was hiking along, I could hear rushing water. Looking to my left I saw a fence with a sign indicating that this was a dangerous spot and to stay on the trail. Of course this is an invitation to explore, and I soon discovered a waterfall that I hadn’t known existed:

Little River Falls.

(Translation: "Come Explore, Little Boy")

I had to very carefully climb down what amounts to a cliff face to get to the base of the waterfall. I used some old logs to maneuver my way down and so spent the next forty-five minutes taking photos of the falls and looking downstream to where there was another two sets of waterfalls that didn’t look to me that they were worth the trouble to photograph. A log had recently lodged itself below Little River Falls and I was able to use it as a kind of brace to take one really nice shot of the waterfall. Most of my other shots contain a lot of debris and vegetation that prevented me from getting a very clear photo of this waterfall. However, that said, it’s not a bad waterfall and I’d recommend finding it if you’re in the park.

After that I went back down to the Jacob Fork Parking lot and sat down at the picnic area and looked at my map. It was getting late—about 4:30 pm, and I decided to head up to High Shoals Falls and get a few photos there before heading back to Charlotte. As I set up my camera tripod for shots, three different groups arrived and left, all of them with dogs. I’m not a fan of taking dogs into our parks, so I’m always nervous when hikers bring their dogs along. These didn’t bother me, except for a moment when I was stuck between a boxer and a German shepherd who looked like they were about to start fighting (with me in between). Ugh.

Leave your dogs at home, people.

Packing up my tripod, I headed back down to my truck, pausing along the way to take a few dozen more photographs. Within two hours I was back home. It was a nice trip, and I really need to take my trailer to the park campground and set up shop for a few days and take my time hiking the few trails there that I haven’t seen.

And, hopefully, next time I’ll arrive at the park without my visitor, Mr. Stomach Virus.

(And, no, before you ask, it was not the pickled green tomatoes.)

Pickled Green Tomatoes!

Pickled green tomatoes!

Oh, hail yes!

My wife has an uncle, an old-timer who grows most of his own vegetables. Every year he has quite a crop of tomatoes, and every year he ends up canning a whole butt-load of green tomatoes.

Now, if you’ve never had any pickled green tomatoes made with good brine and packed with hot, homegrown peppers, then you don’t know what you’re missing. Each season her uncle gifts us with two or three jars of these babies, and I carefully portion them out to myself until the following year. It ain’t easy.

I figure that pickled green tomatoes might actually be an acquired taste. I don’t know. I’ve loved the muthas since the first time I tried them. Now, I have to say that the hot ones are the best. Tomatoes in dill just don’t do it for me. It’s got to be the hot stuff. An amazing jumble of sweet, and tart, and sour, and hot fit for a Mexican table—that’s the way it must be.

(Oooooooooh, BAY-bee!)

Since you guys don’t have an Uncle Joe who knows how to pickle and can his own home-grown ‘maters, then go out to the nearest farmer’s market and try to hustle you up a few jars of these babies.

If you’re a real man, you’ll like ‘em.

(mmmmmm-M!)

If you don’t like ‘em…well to Hell with you, then.

A New Modest Proposal.

A New Modest Proposal.
By
James Robert Smith

Removing roads from some of our Southern wild areas.

Currently, this nation’s conservationists are in a serious struggle to save what remains of our roadless areas from development and exploitation by those who wish to ruin these lands and thus turn a handsome profit from such destruction.

For years, those who wish to protect what remains of our natural heritage have been struggling constantly just to fall back at a slower pace and are generally losing ground at an alarming rate. This constant and unending defensive posture is exhausting and barely profitable for the various and many groups waging the fight.

And it has occurred to me on many occasions that the progressives engaged in this struggle of slow and inexorable defeat are not in the correct type of battle. Instead of this never-ending contrition that results in bite-sized victories underscored by massive losses, they would be far better served to go on the offensive in a big and spectacular way.

As most of us who have followed the history of conservation know, one great story of preservation is that of the example set by Governor Percival Baxter of Maine. Frustrated at every turn, legislatively, to preserve Maine’s greatest peak and the lands around it, he had to wait until he’d retired from politics and slowly begin to buy up the townships of and around Katahdin. Unbelievably, he was able to do this, and donated this fantastic wild land to his native state of Maine.

All of this was done in a time and place wherein a man of some wealth was able to achieve these goals, despite the fact of the enormity of the project. Today, land has reached such a level of monetary value that to repeat this achievement would be pretty much impossible save for a handful of the very wealthiest individuals on Earth. And none of these folk seem to be so inclined.

In the absence of a few foresighted multi-billionaires, the task is left to the coffers of the government of the United States of America. Our government. Of the People, For the People, and By the People. There is no other single entity that can win out in a struggle with the vast corporations who pull the strings and which are so adept in exploiting our natural resources for the benefit of so few and to the sad disadvantage of the majority.

Unfortunately, most folk feel that what is good for those who are raping the Earth is also good for them. Nothing could be farther from the truth, and so there is the need for a solid political struggle of education and counter-propaganda against the machinations and lies espoused by corporate America. Additionally, a massive campaign of either electing or turning current legislative bodies has to be pursued and achieved. Votes must be either won or coerced.

Since there is so little remaining of our eastern roadless wildlands, I propose that new roadless areas be created. This should be the first and most powerful thrust of a new movement created to promote and encourage a new modern conservation. There must be a new Restoration.

Looking at a map, there are several obvious areas here in my native South that would benefit from the destruction of some major roads. First and foremost, and serving as an excellent test run, would be the Tran mountain highway connecting Gatlinburg Tennessee to Cherokee North Carolina. The first step in this process would be the removal of the auto road to Clingman’s Dome. At 6,643 feet above sea level, this is both the highest point in the state of Tennessee, and the highest peak in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Removing the auto road from this extremely beautiful and fragile environment would be a boon to the park and the life that exists on these lands. Because of the elevation and the weather and the vegetation, removing the roadbed and restoring the slopes to the most natural state possible would aid greatly in the learning curve that would hopefully result in the removal of many other great stretches of unneeded roads across the Southeast.

There would be, I predict, great benefit economically to such a massive public works program. Tens of thousands of workers would be needed, perhaps millions. The private sector, in association with a strictly regulated and heavily funded Corps, similar to our old Civilian Conservation Corps, would work in concert to restore our most fragile and ecologically precious areas. As soon as the Clingman’s Dome Auto Road is removed, the next step would be to completely eliminate the highway connecting Cherokee and Gatlinburg.

To be sure, there would be mass opposition from some areas of the private sector against this project. Buying off other wings of the private sector via the enormous government paychecks necessary to achieve this objective should more than offset the voices of opposition. Basically, enable one segment of the very rich to squash another segment of the very rich.

If this particular project seems like too much of a burden to initiate the restoration of these new, vast segments of roadless areas, then the Cherohala Skyway connecting Robbinsville NC and Tellico Plains TN would be a fallback project to get the system under way. This road lies completely on Federal property and has proven to be a massive waste of taxpayer money at the expense of having destroyed what had been a pristine and stunning roadless area in western NC and eastern TN. Removing this road would likely prove to be politically easy and more economically viable, since the Cherohala Skyway has proven to be of almost no benefit to the economies of the two very small villages at either end of this monstrous project. Removing the roadbed and restoring the contours of the peaks and ridges would be a mighty undertaking resulting in the employment of many and the education of countless engineers and ecologists.

After these initial roads were removed from our maps and our ecosystems, we could next tackle two more motor roads that have blighted our Southern highlands for many decades. I propose that the next targets for removal should be the Blue Ridge Parkway and Skyline Drive. Instead a narrow strips of land preserved on either side of a two-lane pavement; Skyline Drive would become a substantial parcel of fragile high country straddling the Blue Ridge escarpment. Nothing but good would come of this, and access to the peaks and coves could still be had via foot and (highly regulated) horseback.

To remove the Blue Ridge Parkway would be to restore the greatest piece of the South’s natural heritage. This awful road tears through the very highest and most scenic lands along its length. Almost any chance of solitude has been lost due to the existence of this long parkway. It should be removed at the earliest opportunity and the peaks and gaps along the length of it allowed to return to their natural state. All access to these high elevation areas should thereafter be only via foot travel and by (heavily regulated) horseback paths.

After these first projects have been achieved, then other such similar areas can be studied and examined for a return to roadless status. There are probably hundreds of likely candidates for roadless restoration. The entire area between Highlands NC and Brevard NC could be made wild and roadless via the use of road removal, dam removal, and the judicious and liberal use of eminent domain and condemnation. A fair market value can be paid for the estates of the elite and removal of structures, power lines, septic tanks, and waste sites. Again, the prospects for employment and the profit by private companies engaged in these projects are enormous. The profits to our water tables, forests, and ecosystems are inestimable. The value of restoring these areas to a wild state and giving back lands in which true isolation can be found and enjoyed are also invaluable.

This is, in total, merely a new modest proposal for our modern times. The sooner we get busy to see it done, the better.

Bagging some peaks in Hickory Nut Gorge.

Hickory Nut Gorge, located in North Carolina just south of the city of Asheville, is a classis southern Appalachian gorge. It’s relatively deep, ranging from just a few hundred to well over one thousand feet in depth, and moderately narrow. It is cut by one major tributary, the Broad River.




The lower section of the gorge was dammed many years ago to form Lake Lure, widely considered to be one of the prettiest man-made lakes in North America. Since the lake is almost cupped by the escarpment walls of solid granite that form the tail of the gorge, it is undeniably a strikingly scenic location. The real estate around the lake is some of the most expensive in the state, and hardly a square foot of it remains undeveloped. Houses stand in close proximity to one another, and there is almost no public access to the lake itself. And no slope, no matter how steep, seems to be free of a house of some type as long as that land is waterfront. It is both a horrifying and humorous sight.

The gorge itself is also heavily developed, with two communities lying deep within it: Lake Lure, and Bat Cave. All along the gorge are inns, shops, two post offices, restaurants, private campgrounds, one amusement park (Chimney Rock Park), and uncounted thousands of vacation homes with accompanying driveways and roads being endlessly cut through the forests and gouged into the slopes of the gorge and onto the ridgelines.

However…all is not lost.

There is something like a wilderness aspect of the land still to be found in a couple of places within Hickory Nut Gorge. With the help of the Nature Conservancy, the State of North Carolina has managed to procure the ownership and/or conservation easements of just under 3,000 acres of land on either side of the gorge just above Lake Lure. Chimney Rock Park has been purchased by the state, and a good portion of both Rumbling Bald Mountain and Shumont Mountain are now in the hands of the state and will all be a part of the new park, due to be open to the public in 2008.

Currently, there are no facilities at all within the lands to be incorporated into the park boundaries, but one is allowed to hike there, and Rumbling Bald has become the single most popular rock climbing location in the entire state (if not the entire Southeast). On any given day of nice weather, be prepared to share the climbing routes on Rumbling Bald with dozens of other rock climbers.

The forests of Hickory Nut Gorge are typical of the southern Appalachians. Mainly cove hardwoods, there are some patches of hemlock groves here and there. None of the trees seem to be of exceptional size, since the forests are almost all second and third growth. I have encountered a few old trees, though.



The gorge is best known outside the area as the location of the last scenes in the popular film, Last of the Mohicans. Most of these scenes were shot within what is now Chimney Rock Park, and which contain the “Chimney Rock” itself, a vast number of high granite walls, and Hickory Nut Falls, one of the tallest in the Southeast (at 404 feet).

Another Crazy Comic Book Artist.

Another Crazy Comic Book Artist

This one’s tougher. You spend a lot of time with a character like this, and there was a time when there was a friendship. Despite the fact that it became obvious at some point that the guy was a real bastard. A truly poisonous figure. So I reckon that there is some character flaw in me that I allowed myself to remain on a friendly relationship with someone who should have been shunned.

When I met him in the mid-80s, he was already a professional comic book artist, having worked for a number of publishers. He was about my age and while I was married and living in my own house, this guy was single and living in his parents’ basement where he had a really neat-o apartment. The place was packed with all kinds of cool shit that appealed to my sense of nostalgia—things he had found and bought at yard sales and flea markets and swap meets—Bettie Page magazines (the genuine 1950s stuff), and Silver Age superhero crap, and monster material from the early to mid 60s Famous Monsters –inspired craze.

He sat in the center of it all, the first person I’d met to whom I would attach the word droll. He was quite amusing, and looking at his work, very talented.

Driving around with him one day, we went to visit his girlfriend. She was quite pretty, and reminded me of the character I’d once seen at a writer’s convention: Poppy Brite. Red hair, pale skin, attractive figure. Her constant allusion to her gay friends put me off my feed, though, describing sitting about at someone’s home watching gay porn. She was just doing it for shock value. Right. Okay.

We sit in the apartment of his girlfriend. A longhaired rocker type, arms festooned with tattoos (he was ahead of the curve!), is there, also. The rocker dude keeps edging closer and closer to my comic artist pal’s girlfriend, until he’s sitting right beside her on the floor, his torso touching her back. Everyone is talking and I (as usual) sit and listen and store it all away so that I can—perhaps—recall it at some later date and use it in a work of fiction.

Rocker dude casually drapes his arm about red-haired-Poppy-Brite-looking-comic-artist-“girlfriend”. My comic artist pal suddenly goes all alpha male. “Hey, man!” He screams. “She’s my girlfriend, man!”

I don’t bloody fucking think so, I recall thinking.

Comic artist slinks off and I follow him (we’re using his car). Rocker dude stays with red-haired friend-of-gays gal. Later that week, they run off together to Texas or somewhere far away and comic artist phones my house to whine about the betrayal and I quickly find a reason to hang up and be somewhere else.

Later, I’m at a comic convention with this guy at which Dave Sim is in attendance (he did a silly little funny animal comic book called Cerebus). Comic artist and Sim talk. Later, after the show, comic artist tells me that he’s going to do a comic with Sim. “We’re going to jam, man.” They never do.

Some time after that, comic artist pal starts up a rock ‘n’ roll band. By this time, his dad has blown his brains out, his mom has sold the house and he no longer has that cool pad in his parents’ basement. For myself, I still have my house and a wife and a son. Comic artist guy is living in a shed in the back yard of his mom’s new place. When I visit him there, I have to go outside in the bushes next to his shed to take a piss. This is where he tells all of his visitors to go to take a piss. I shudder to think what this place must smell like when the heat presses down in the summer.

I go to see him perform in a club with his rock ‘n’ roll band. I wonder if he’ll ever grow the fuck up. At this time he’s drawing lots of comic books for a number of companies. He knocks the stuff out and the lack of effort shows. We all wonder how he keeps finding work. Drinking beer in the bar, I watch as he and his band come up on the makeshift stage and begin to play. They’re not very good. They sing the theme to the Ralph Bakshi Spider-Man TV show. I finish my beer and leave.

Comic book artist lands a gig drawing a major comic book for a major publisher. The money rolls in. He still lives in the shed in his momma’s back yard. But he spends lots of money on prostitutes, and is later shocked when the money runs out and they stop seeing him. I’m so stunned by the fact that this is a revelation to him that I once again find something else to do and somewhere else to be and hang up on his whining voice.

Later, he’s seriously dating a woman who has children (not his). At some point, this woman breaks off the relationship (after he loans her parents money), and around the time another high-paying gig ends and the money dries up. She won’t return his calls. Comic artist pal calls me up to complain about this, expecting me to have some answers. I have none for him. Finally, he says to me:

“I’m going to kill her kid.” (I recall that she has a two-year-old.)

“What?”

“It’s the only way I can think of to get her attention…man.”

I hang up and call long-distance information to get the number of the police in his town. After that, I hang up and look at the number the operator has given me. I’m going to rat his crazy ass out before he can do anything insane.

The phone rings. I pick it up.

“I was just kidding, man,” he says.

“You were?”

“Yeah. I wouldn’t do anything like that. I’m just frustrated is all. I wouldn’t do that.”

I hang up. I don’t call the police. Thank the gods, he doesn’t kill her child. Yeah, I should have called the cops anyway, but I didn’t. I didn’t.

Some time after this, comic book artist pal calls to tell me he’s got a new girlfriend. They get married. He moves out of the shed in his momma’s back yard. He and his wife have a kid. Then another. He can’t find work.

“I really need work, man. I don’t have any money coming in. My wife is the only bread-winner.”

“Get a job,” I tell him. “Any job. Loading dock. Warehouse. If you need money, you can always get a job lifting heavy shit.” He’s horrified at the concept of working, of manual labor. He won’t consider it. He slowly sells off the cool stuff that used to adorn his basement pad in his parents’ house. The monster stuff. The Bettie Page stuff. The comic book stuff. The gittar.

“I had to sell my guitar, man!” No. You didn’t. You had to get a job, you lazy bastard.

Over the years, I would occasionally sell a script here and there to some publisher. When they’d ask me about an artist, I would sometimes give them his name and phone number. He needed the money. He’d sometimes get the gig.

One day, toward the end, when his peculiarities had reached the point at which I had to admit that he was insane, I sit in the living room of his apartment. His wife is at work. His kids putter about the place. Somehow he steers the conversation to discussing some aspect of World War II. He knows it’s a passing interest of mine. He also knows that my mom was half-Jewish.

“You know,” he says. “The Germans were justified in exterminating the Jews.”

I look at him. My eyebrow perks up over my one good eye. “How’s that,” I ask. (This is one I have to know.)

“Can you imagine—living in your own country—and you have to go to this…this alien to ask for money.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“German Jews controlled all of the money. Germans had to go groveling to Jews to ask for their own money!” (Yes, this guy had been known to hang out with the other comic artist I wrote about earlier.)

Having been raised in the South, I am vividly aware of the sanctity of another’s man’s home. You don’t challenge a man in his own home. So I get up and leave. I don’t see comic book artist pal for some time. He sends me emails in which he slowly begins to assail my character, my physical appearance, and then my wife.

I attend a comic book convention to help a friend who sells comic books. I am walking down the hall of the convention building. I see comic book artist pal in the wide space with his wife and kids. I head his way and stop him.

“Let’s step outside,” I say to him. (We are not in his house, now.)

“No,” he says.

“Come on you fucking, worthless, crazy, mother-fucking sack of shit. Don’t be a fucking coward. Step outside with me and let’s settle this. You need your fucking ass kicked in the worst fucking way you goddamned worthless piece of shit.”

He calls to his wife, who steps between us to defend him. I recall how he once choked her senseless and an ambulance had to be called to take her to the hospital. I’ve heard about the psychology of women who suffer this kind of abuse, yet remain faithful to the abuser. But I’ve not heard about the psychology of a person like me who knows a guy is insane and yet remain friends with the nut.

With his pitiful wife defending him, I have to let the cowardly racist woman-beater go. He quickly finds a phone and the police come to talk to me. They tell me not to beat him up. I promise them that I won’t do so.

Comic book artist pal is now far away. On the west coast, living not far from where my nephew, a medical doctor, now resides. My nephew keeps inviting me out to stay with him and see the area and climb some mountains.

I may take him up on this.

There’s some unfinished business.

Comic Book Artists I Have Known

Comic Book Artists I Have Known.
First in a series
By
James Robert Smith

Recently, a comic book artist/writer for whom I have much admiration stated that one of the clearest thinkers he knew was another comic book artist/writer I do not admire (to put it lightly). Which just goes to show how one can be totally surprised (even stunned) by the comments of someone whose intellectual capacity was not under any suspicion.

Since I used to work in the comic book industry as a retailer (I once owned several comic book shops), and then, peripherally, as a writer (I managed to sell several stories to several publishers), I came to know quite a number of comic book artists. Most of these folk were pleasant enough, and many of them were rather strange, and some were truly sweet, and some were dazzlingly smart, and some were glib, and some were stupid, and a few of them were actually evil.

Back in the day, when I was roaming around the USA selling collectibles, I used to stop at the home of a well-known comic creator when I was in the city where he lived. He had a great house with an enormous dry basement packed with comic books and all kinds of neat collectible shit that he dealt on the side. I really liked this guy. He had his act down, and he would quote the lines he’d rehearsed that clung to his created persona perfectly. This guy was very pleasant to be around and I always got a kick out of my visits there where I would buy lots of back issues of his comic on my way out the door at a price that enabled me to mark them up and make a decent profit.

During my visits there, we discovered that we shared an interest in WWII history. I especially liked discussing the European Theater of operations, for I’ve always found the personalities at work in that particular part of the war far more interesting than the folk fighting the racist Whites versus Asians battle going on in the Pacific Theater. This artist and I would have a good time talking about the various generals, colonels, captains, lower-grade officers and famous non-coms, and the respective battles that all made them into legends.

The last time I was at this cat’s house, he began to tell me the details of a particular German officer whose history was unknown to me: Joachim Peiper. The stories were rather interesting. And he mentioned to me a quote from Gen. Peiper. After the war, some Allied journalist asked him if he had any regrets. And Peiper’s reply was:

“Only that we lost.”

To which I replied, “Fuck that Nazi son-of-a-bitch.”

I will never forget the expression of utter pain that passed over the face of my comic book artist host. In retrospect, it was almost touching. He had thought, because I had an objective interest in professional soldiers such as Otto Skorzeny that I was sympathetic to the Nazi cause. This artist had no way of knowing that my mom was half-Jewish and that I am an ardent anti-racist. And I had, just previous to this moment, had no inkling that the artist into whose house I sometimes went to visit was, in fact, a closet neo-Nazi who, I later learned, had friends who were active in the neo-Nazi movement. I’d had no suspicion that the Nazi memorabilia in his basement had any significance other than as collectibles to be bought and sold for a profit. In short, I’d had no idea that my sometime host was an actual, honest-to-Goebbels Nazi.

Later, I learned from speaking to a few other comic book artists who lived in his area and who knew him fairly well that he was, in fact, an extreme racist and a virulent Jew-hater. One of his friends had been imprisoned after being convicted of killing a black man just so that he could meet certain criteria for a certain tattoo on his elbow.

“You might not want to go back over there,” one of the comic book artists told me.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “Not going to happen.”

I’ve told this story a few times, and I’m always asked who this guy is. Well, frankly, it’s none of anyone’s business who this guy is. My own dad was a radical leftist who thought that he would live to see the violent overthrow of the capitalist system. That was his business, to think what he wanted to think and await a revolution that was never going to come. And it’s no one’s business but his own what this artist thinks. My dad suffered because of what he thought and said, because there was no end to folk who never failed to denounce his beliefs and rat him out to the FBI and the local population who would hound him without mercy. Similarly, this Nazi comic book artist can damned well think and say and believe whatever it is he wishes without having to worry about someone ratting him out for no good reason. His racist ideas are never going to see fruit. His own right wing beliefs will never be made real. Let him think his diseased thoughts in peace as he goes about selling his art to white people and black people and Jews and taking their money and living his life.

Later:

More crazy comic book artists I have known.

The only good Nazi is a dead Nazi.

A Real Pro

A Real Pro
By
James Robert Smith

He went slowly
to the coffee table and began
to carefully lift each bottle of beer.
Goddamn.
Some of them were still half full.
He was going to have to drink a lot of beer before
tossing those bottles.
Fuck.
He hated drinking with people who
weren’t alcoholics.
They wasted too much of
his beer, and it didn’t matter if they’d brought it.
It was his house and they came
to see him, so it was his beer.

Now he was going to have to swill
it all
before he could clear the bottles
out.
Warm beer.
Feh.
He’d have to watch for cigarette butts,
he realized,
raising the first bottle to
his lips.

The Jawbone of an Ass, autobigraphy as fiction.

Some years back, a publisher saw one of my stories in Weird Tales and got in touch with me. He wanted to publish a collection of my short fiction. So Steve Bissette wrote a very nice and flattering introduction and Harry Fassl graciously illustrated the book. But, the publisher turned out to be a flake and the book never appeared.


One of my favorite stories in the stillborn project was an original that was a departure for me. Semi-autobiograpy, with not a hint of the supernatural. It was my first step away from typical horror fiction and I've never gone back to the kind of thing I wrote before I wrote this one.


I won't say where autobiography veers from fiction.

The Jawbone of an Ass

by

James Rorbert Smith

At first glance, Ed Jones looked like 250 pounds of fat. Lots of people made that mistake. But Ed wasn't all fat. He worked out with the weights at the South Georgia Barbell Club, and he could bench-press over 400 pounds. His arms were like steel, his legs like a couple of concrete posts. However, with the baggy shirts he wore, he looked like just a great, big fat guy.


It was well known that he was half-Jew. His dad had been a Jew from New York. Everyone knew it and it followed him around the small Georgia town like a gauzy ghost dogging his ass. "Yeah, my daddy was a Jew," he'd say. He didn't give a damn. His dad had always told him that Ed couldn't be a Jew because your mom has to be a Jew for you to be a Jew. So he wasn't a Jew. But everyone else thought he was. Damn Jew, they'd mutter. How'd a Jew ever get a name like Jones, anyway, they'd ask.


So these two guys, one named Philip Tow and the other named Ricky Webb, were into the Aryan Nation stuff. They'd bought the party line: Jews were evil. They didn't know Ed Jones, but they knew of him, and they knew where he hung out. The pair of Georgia boys decided to go to the bar where Ed liked to drink so that they could kick his ass. It would be fun.


Ed was at a booth waiting for his friends, Batten and Gronroos and Gardner. They all went to the Binnacle off the St. Simons Island Causeway every Wednesday night to throw down a few drinks and shoot the breeze. Ed was always early to grab the booth in the rear and wait for the others, before the place had a chance to get crowded. That's where he was, sitting in the back, when Tow and Webb came in.

The pair of racist shit-kickers saw Jones there, slowly sipping his favorite, a vodka-Collins. He'd nurse one of those for a while, chew the ice, and wait for his pals.


The pair of jeans-clad, flannel-wearing sonso'bitches eased down to the shadowy rear where Jones was sitting ignorant of their intention. They'd planned it out, and they didn't want to take too long. Kick the Jew's ass and get out before John Law came calling.


The bartop ran almost to the very back of the building, where Ed was cloaked in the shadows. Tow was closest to him, Webb just to the right of his neo-Nazi pal. They each put one foot up on the kick rail and turned toward Jones and Tow said, "I think I smell a dirty fucking Jew, Webb. What about you?"


"Yeah," Webb agreed. "I smell the filthy rat-looking piece of shit, too."


Ed just froze and glared at them from where he sat. He didn't really look like much if what you thought you were seeing was just a big, fat guy waiting for his pals. His face was kind of boyish, his hair flat and dark brown, his clothes plain. Yeah, he was as wide as a Mack truck, but most fat-asses were. Tow, a lean and wiry sort of fellow, a natural athlete who had avoided all participatory sports in high school, leaned forward in a rather artful way and spit at Ed. The small gob of mucus arced and landed almost elegantly on the third button of Ed's blue work shirt.

Ed wasn't really what came to the mind of your average South Georgia racist when he thought of a Jew. Well, not unless that particular cracker bought into that jazz about all of those Philistines and the jawbone of an ass. These guys just were not expecting what happened next.


Ed came out of his shadowy booth like a gigantic cannonball. Neither of his targets was able to so much as flinch before he was on them. Tow, of course, was first. Ed's hands were small, and his fingers long and lean, like those of a fine musician rather than those of a fighter. But his right fist cracked against Tow's face, and the noise that shot through and through the bar was the sound of Tow's once solid mandible shattering like a dry twig underfoot. Before he could even react to the excruciating pain that was spasming down his neck and up into his rather pitiful excuse for a brain, Ed had rammed his elbow into Tow's chest, almost breaking him in half. Only the amazing quality of the spine to flex saved him from a severed backbone.

And next there was Ricky Webb. He was able to take half a step away during this blinding display of violence, and so Ed had to reach out and grab at him. Ed missed in his grasp for the back of the white boy's skull and his fingers snapped shut on Webb's left cheek, which then stretched impossibly as Ed pulled Webb's head down and forward, bringing his muscled thigh up, up, up. Pow. Webb's nose exploded in a great, impressive shower of crimson that exited his face in a violent blossom of warm wet.

Unconscious, Webb did not feel his body being lifted, one-handed, and smashed down upon the painfully crawling form of his already shattered buddy. The breath whooshed out of Tow's lungs, and the leader of that particular pack of vermin was not able to scream as Ed danced merrily and quite madly upon the two bodies now staining the wooden, splintery floor of the Binnacle.

Then there was a pause. The air inside the place seemed to hold still, the voice of Waylon Jennings on the jukebox even paused in mid-note. Behind the bar, the 'tender stared back, trying to pierce the dark shadows where he knew the great and powerful Ed was holding a particularly red and violent court. The shadow that was Ed Jones bent over, and in each of his very, very, very strong hands he took a fistful of the hair of those who had thought to bully him. He took those fists filled with their long, well-washed hair and, using his big feet to brace against their skulls, he ripped that hair out by the roots. Webb was awakened by the sheer agony of this act, and his eyes opened to the sight of the Binnacle's floorboards, and he could not quite figure why his head burned as if aflame with the bites of one thousand fire ants.

Ed began to walk out of the Binnacle, with no one there to stop him. Behind, he left Webb and Tow moaning and semi-conscious. In either hand he carried a bit of scalp, each dripping bloodily as he walked.

Just at the door, with the light of the fading sun illuminating his face (but the bartender would claim that he had never seen the person who had so badly beaten Webb and Tow), he turned and addressed the only other man awake in the place.

"Tell Batten and Gronroos and Gardner that I couldn't make it tonight."

"Will do," the bartender said. And he was as good as his word.

Mad Max in the Low Country

I was looking over at E. Campbell's website and saw a photo of this truck:









The truck looks like something out of Mad Max.

And it reminded me of something that happened some years ago in my hometown of Brunswick on the coast of Georgia (the one adjacent to South Carolina, not Russia).


A fellow got locked up in the local jail which had just had an upfit and had an enormous plexiglass front into which you could actually look in and see the jail cells.


Locked-up-fellow's pals decided they needed their buddy with them rather than locked up. So they procured an enormous flatbed truck and went to work on it. Said friends were all handy at metalworking and welding and they built something that did, indeed, look like a contraption from some post-apocalyptic movie. It had a steel cage built over the cab and a gigantic, pointed battering ram over the top that stuck out about three feet beyond the body of the vehicle.


Bright and early one morning they drove their Mad Max monstrosity onto the main drag and to the jailhouse. Getting a good, running start, they floored the thing and rammed it into the new plexiglass window into which you could see all of the cells.

All for naught. The plexiglass was some then-new material. Their battering ram barely scratched the surface, leaving a small cloudy imprint at the point of impact. The truck bounced back and came to a dead stop and refused to start. The pair of morons inside of it leaped groggily from the cab and tried to make their own getaway, but the local cops who had stood in the jailhouse watching this madness through the enormous plexiglass window were on them like dumb on a whiteboy.


They soon joined their pal in the hoosegow.

If I can find a photograph of that contraption, I'll post it. This was in the days shortly before the internet, so it may be difficult to locate.