Wood shavings from back here North Carolina way.
Y’know, sometimes life’s burnin’ issues land flat in your lap all hissin’ an’ fidgetin’ an’ peein’ all over your new britches.
Well, today was one’a ‘em days hereabouts in Pinehurst Village. You know, that fairy-tale-lookin’ place you see on the Golf Channel and in all ‘em Golf magazines in the dentist’s waitin’ room? Just west of Ft Bragg? ‘Twixt Fayetteville and Charlotte? No?
Well, never you mind. It’s a right pleasant part of the world. Quiet, pretty, well-heeled, an’ as reality-averse as any big or snooty Californee, ‘Lympian, or Newyawkish sort’a place. It differs in that it has the luxury of bein’ surrounded by The Old North State, which provides some of the more important aspects of whatchacall American Civilization. These allow the Disneyite enclaves (including the Duke and UNC academic swamps, f’rinstance) to live their little fantasies without the more brutal forms of reality trackin’ mud an’ manure all over the carpets.
(What? Hold yer britches up, dangit! I’m gettin’ to it.)
Last month, ‘em ol’ Pinehurst’s supervisors passed ‘emselves a brand spankin’ shiny new ord’nance that outlawed concealed carry in all of their parks, recreational facilities, an’ greenways. Nobody hereabouts new it was even bein’ considered. They just up an’ did it with nary a kiss my butt. We all heard about it afterwards ’cause of a short blurb in the local paper. Dontchaknow that stirred up a hornet’s nest the likes of which haven’t been seen since in the area since … well, I dunno, really. Only been here ten years, but I’m sure it must’a been a right shock to ‘em supervisors. Yessiree, they got themselves an earful/emailful about it. First, it’s agin’ the new NC law that went into effect last December. (That there’s a long, detailed story which is neither here nor there for this post.) Second, they just went ahead and friggin did it without botherin’ to ask folks what they might think about it. Well, that’s not entirely fair. I suspect an anti-gun staffer and a supervisor just tried to pull a fast one. Yeah, this ain’t over, pal. Third, reckon this was just about the dumbest thing they could’a done an’ the dumbest way they could’a done it.
Well, this mornin’ I went to the supervisors’ meeting where we understood they were gonna backtrack and re-look at the issue. What I didn’t expect was the dust cloud they raised in scrambling to repeal the entire dadburned ord’nance. The tap dancin’ and hang-dog … No, not hang-dog. More like the look on a dog’s face when you come home to a shredded newspaper and toppled furniture. I’ll give ‘em credit for the general “No-excuse, Sir!” Except for ooooone guy. He wants to revisit the question.
[Here, insert a few rational and effective short commentaries from the audience: Tea Party, gun club, professional CCH instructors, etc. I passed, since my points had been made, and the battle was won.]
It was made clear to the supervisors that this would be an election issue if. this. stupid. idea. ever. arose. again.
We were all a bit puzzled by how easy that was. Hunh. Oh, well. A win’s a win.
This afternoon, I learned that a couple days earlier, a lady was returning to her car from a stroll in the greenway and, upon seein’ a strange feller sittin’ in her car, let out a scream. Obviously, even if she had been a CCH permit holder, she couldn’t have defended herself; because, according to the ordinance, she would have had to leave her handgun in the car in order to take that walk. Well, the cops chased the guy, but he escaped into the greenway, where everybody is certified defenseless. He’s still on the loose.
Y’think that might explain how easy it was to get the ordinance repealed?
Actually, I regret not having spoken. I really wanted to end with some imagery:
Places like Pinehurst think of themselves as kind of a fairytale castle, but they overlook two important things:
the Barbarians are really out there, and
there ain’t no moat.
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12 Comments!
Bravo.
But I’d bet there was first a lot of Whiskey Tango Foxtrot amongst the locals.
I’m going to let my mind go a bit off topic on this, but only because it’s a fun little game I like to play when I read here.
Major topics are posted by many of Sondra’s friends. I like to read the post and before I get to the tag at end try to guess who posted it. Clair? Doug? Sondra? Or the many others that post the main topic.
They each have their own writing style. All unique, all interesting. I never know what I will read here but I know it will always be interesting. Perhaps even something we hadn’t even thought about. Sometimes politics on the local absurd scale (California) or what we have accomplished in space. Sometimes it’s heartwarming stories or stories that just make you want to scream.
When the comments are added in it just gets better. This, SondraKistan, is a place to come and learn. Sometimes laugh and sometimes vent. The comments are like ice cream on warm apple pie.
Thank-you all of you for what you add to this place. It’s my escape from a world that is myopic at times and crazy on a good day.
Oh, and nice post Doug, I knew it was you writing this before I got through the first paragraph. I’m getting pretty good at most of the posters and commenter’s.
Kinda’ feels like home.
I think I’ll sit in my garage this weekend and smoke some fish. Relax and enjoy. Take my camera get some pictures of the local traffic; it’s a dead end street. Seems a new neighbor is running some drugs out of the place and police say that can’t do anything unless they get some license plates and photos to see if they can connect the dots. So says the State Trooper that my neighbors talked to.
So what goes best with smoked Salmon, Mossberg 500 or a .45 ACP.
I’m tired of being silent. You want proof Michigan State Police? I’ll get it for you. Maybe I’ll whittle a bit of wood while I’m watching.
I’d go with the Mossberg, with the.45 as a backup.
Doug, sounds a bit like the recent little adventure in a nearby community where the town council got severely schooled. Only you tell the story so much more entertainingly.
Tctsunami, Do you have a camera mount for the mossberg? Why carry extra equipment when one can multi-task?
How bout a sign in his yard that sez ” He is a police informer!” He can pull it down but the word will be out & he will be loath to open his door. The more he protests, the more certain his customers will doubt….
Doug, I think maybe your little supervisors thought they were in fantasyland. There’s a mindset that takes over when ordinary people get a little power. We can do anything. Besides, I bet they were a bunch of half-backs. (Left New Jersey for Florida, couldn’t stand the heat & moved half way back) You are fortunate to have a little dose of reality down the road in Fayettenam.
Up the road a piece, I live near the home of the Jesse Helms Library, but it is way too close to Car-lot, NC, and the DNC dizziness. The local rubes are all atwitter with anticipation over the Royals coming to town. None of them have even thought about the deficit Teh One’s campaign is running like he’s running the country. Wait til he skips out on the bill.
Congrats on your victory
It’s always an amusement to watch them would-be “rulers” dampen their drawers when the room fills with irritated citizenry.
Amazing that’s all it would take to take back this country: citizenry at local govt meetings making their wishes known…
A little tidbit I should’ve mentioned is that one of the citizens comments included the term “sugary drinks.” I almost fell out’a my seat. I had been meanin’ to use a Bloomberg-wannabe thing in my remarks. Man, I love these folks.
tctsunami #2
Thanks for the kind words.
You’re spot-on in how I read the porch patter, too.
This is prob’ly a good place to remind folks that my occasional old-boy patois* is just a style device when folksiness seems called for (or, you know, called fer). I apologize if it rankles some folk (I, too, cringe at ethnic speech jokes), but it’s meant to take the edge off dry text and make it more like a one-on-one chat among ol’ friends. It’s meant to be read as speakin’, not writin’. The phonetics are a conglomerate of regional speech styles, not necessarily from the three main NC accents that I can detect. There’s prob’ly some Vahginya-mountain, Teksarkansan, Ten’seean, Kentuck, an’ a smatterin’ of others from the relaxed side’a jawin’. Not makin’ fun’a anybody, just repeatin’ things that make me smile, the way I heared ‘em, as best I can reproduce ‘em in writin’. And nope, I don’t talk like that. My mid-Michigan speech is prob’ly the most uninteresting in the dad-blamed English language.
Hunh. Now that I think about it, however, I actually do talk a mite slower when I whittle.
(What? Yeah, might just be a walk-and-chew-gum-at-the-same-time thing, too.)
* Aka: authentic frontier gibberish
(Do you really need the Cultural ref, here?)
Not only ain’t there no moat, but the alligators who think there is one are there.
I apologize if it rankles some folk (I, too, cringe at ethnic speech jokes), but it’s meant to take the edge off dry text and make it more like a one-on-one chat among ol’ friends.
No apologies required. I rather enjoy the occasional foray into local gibberish. (No cultural ref needed.)
Years ago, I read a neat little SF story titled A Logic Named Joe, wherein the author predicted the internet (back in about 1948!), and it was also written in dialect. In the introduction to the story, Isaac Asimov and Martin Greenberg commented on how difficult it is to write in dialect and to make it convincing. You do a remarkably good job of it.
Encore. Encore !!!
A Logic Named Joe
Murray Leinster, 1946 (!).
The URL has a “_2.html”. “_1.html” is an editorial on Leinster.
PS: The first commercial computer, UNIVAC, was delivered to the Census Bureau in 1951 – 5 years after the story.