To contact us Click HERE
The Appalachian Trail at Springer Mountain and its approach from Amicalola Falls State Park reopen today after a five day closure imposed while the U.S. Forest Service and partners battled a large wildfire in the area.
The Black Mountain Fire is now one hundred percent contained within a 455 acre containment area. It began Saturday near the Black Mountain and Springer Mountain area of the Chattahoochee National Forest near the Dawson, Gilmer, Fannin and Lumpkin County lines. A large response team was mobilized which included the local U.S. Forest Service Type 3 Incident Management Team and crews from a neighboring national forest. Georgia Forestry Commission, Georgia Department of Natural Resources, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Lumpkin County Fire Department and Gilmer County Fire Department all assisted in the response.
The cause of the fire is under investigation.
The wildfire did not affect any structures, including the Black Mountain trail shelter, and was not a threat to Amicalola Falls State Park or the Len Foote Hike Inn.
All temporary closures have been lifted for the Appalachian Trail approach trail from its crossing on Forest Road 28-2 at Nimblewill Gap to the Springer Mountain trailhead parking area on Forest Road 42. In addition, Forest Road 46 between Nimblewill Gap and High Shoals Church Road is now open.
Jeff
Hiking in the Smokies
30 Kasım 2012 Cuma
"Virginia's Mark Twain"
To contact us Click HERE
It's not that far, a couple hours' drive, from Person County N.C. to Patrick County, Va. But Barnie Day's journey to published author has been going on nearly four decades now. Along the way he has been a reporter, editor and newspaper publisher; retail merchant and health clinic administrator; political commentator and sage of the Blue Ridge, business executive and farmer; banker and county manager; county supervisor and state legislator. A couple of people who should know have called him "Virginia's Mark Twain."
And as many who live around Belcher Mountain's Meadows of Dan already know, he has fought through Parkinson's disease while producing some crackerjack writing in his novel "The Last Pahvant," available on amazon.com and elsewhere, and in a new work about life in Oxford, N.C. during the Civil Rights era.
Now there's a 3,000 word story on Barnie Day in the July-August issue of Carolina Alumni Review, published by the General Alumni Association at UNC Chapel Hill. Here's a link to that story: If that doesn't work, copy and paste this into your whatchamacallit: http://www.carolinaalumnireview.com/carolinaalumnireview/20120708/?pg=22&pm=2&u1=friend
That story began 10 months ago after I read a version of "Pahvant" and told Barnie what everyone who reads the book also tells him: It ought to be in print. I sent a copy to my friend Regina Oliver last October and suggested the Review write about Barnie, who graduated from UNC in 1975. She immediately agreed, enthusiastically so, and asked me to write the piece. So last November, Barnie and I started meeting early mornings for about an hour -- the length of time it takes for my arthritic hands to go from useful to seized up -- and we talked and talked on chilly mornings, and sometimes in the evenings over some Irish whiskey -- well into the new year.
We talked about life in the 1950s and 60s when he was growing up in Roxboro, about working in factories and at little newspapers, about scrabbling his way through Chapel Hill with the help of a athletic meal ticket his roommate had ("I tell people I went through Carolina on a football scholarship, it just won't mine," he likes to say), starting up a newspaper that folded not because it wasn't good, but because it was undercapitalized, and moving through a variety of jobs over the years, all the while thinking about writing the long form and telling stories people will want to read.
The editors at the Alumni Review liked the story of Barnie's career so much that they hired one of the best photographers anywhere: Steve Exum. He came up to Meadows of Dan shortly after Spring arrived and shot wonderful photos of Barnie and Debbie Day, the restored farmhouse where they live (with secret rooms below ground where, the story goes, a moonshiner and bootlegger hid his illicit wares long ago) and the writing room where Barnie turns on the lamp many mornings hours before the sun starts to brighten the rural countryside.
Oh, meant to add this one, too, of Barnie and Debbie, with Yip.
It's not that far, a couple hours' drive, from Person County N.C. to Patrick County, Va. But Barnie Day's journey to published author has been going on nearly four decades now. Along the way he has been a reporter, editor and newspaper publisher; retail merchant and health clinic administrator; political commentator and sage of the Blue Ridge, business executive and farmer; banker and county manager; county supervisor and state legislator. A couple of people who should know have called him "Virginia's Mark Twain."
And as many who live around Belcher Mountain's Meadows of Dan already know, he has fought through Parkinson's disease while producing some crackerjack writing in his novel "The Last Pahvant," available on amazon.com and elsewhere, and in a new work about life in Oxford, N.C. during the Civil Rights era.
Now there's a 3,000 word story on Barnie Day in the July-August issue of Carolina Alumni Review, published by the General Alumni Association at UNC Chapel Hill. Here's a link to that story: If that doesn't work, copy and paste this into your whatchamacallit: http://www.carolinaalumnireview.com/carolinaalumnireview/20120708/?pg=22&pm=2&u1=friend
That story began 10 months ago after I read a version of "Pahvant" and told Barnie what everyone who reads the book also tells him: It ought to be in print. I sent a copy to my friend Regina Oliver last October and suggested the Review write about Barnie, who graduated from UNC in 1975. She immediately agreed, enthusiastically so, and asked me to write the piece. So last November, Barnie and I started meeting early mornings for about an hour -- the length of time it takes for my arthritic hands to go from useful to seized up -- and we talked and talked on chilly mornings, and sometimes in the evenings over some Irish whiskey -- well into the new year.
We talked about life in the 1950s and 60s when he was growing up in Roxboro, about working in factories and at little newspapers, about scrabbling his way through Chapel Hill with the help of a athletic meal ticket his roommate had ("I tell people I went through Carolina on a football scholarship, it just won't mine," he likes to say), starting up a newspaper that folded not because it wasn't good, but because it was undercapitalized, and moving through a variety of jobs over the years, all the while thinking about writing the long form and telling stories people will want to read.
The editors at the Alumni Review liked the story of Barnie's career so much that they hired one of the best photographers anywhere: Steve Exum. He came up to Meadows of Dan shortly after Spring arrived and shot wonderful photos of Barnie and Debbie Day, the restored farmhouse where they live (with secret rooms below ground where, the story goes, a moonshiner and bootlegger hid his illicit wares long ago) and the writing room where Barnie turns on the lamp many mornings hours before the sun starts to brighten the rural countryside.
Oh, meant to add this one, too, of Barnie and Debbie, with Yip.
The 'Skunk Works' bass
To contact us Click HERE
My career as a bass fiddle player has been only slightly more successful than my career as a pitcher in the big leagues. Which is to say, I would have starved to death during the Johnson Administration if we had depended on either one of them to put food on the table, although I played a whole lot more bass in my youth than I ever threw in organized baseball. I pretty much gave up on the baseball thing at about age 10 or 12, when I could throw a blazing fastball that nobody every knew, including me, where it was going. I once walked a fellow on a fourth pitch that went over the backstop in a sandlot game. I think they're still looking for the ball.
But for years, after falling in love with the bass sound while playing an old brass Sousaphone in the band at Aycock Junior High School in Greensboro, I fooled around with a bass fiddle. In high school days a bunch of us got up a folk music group and decided we'd be the next Kingston Trio. I borrowed an old, beat-up, dark-brown aluminum bass fiddle from the father of a friend and we played all over Greensboro and sometimes as far away as Danville, VA. We entered a big contest where the prize was an appearance on the Arthur Smith Television Show down in Charlotte, knowing we'd win. (I recently mentioned this to a friend who, unbeknownst to me, had grown up in Greensboro, and he said, "Wait a minute, did you guys have on wide-striped shirts?" We did. He saw us that day long ago, 1963 I guess, up on a tractor trailer bandstand. And so he also saw us not win the thing, not go on to the bigtime in the Queen City, not go on to great fame and fortune in the entertainment business.)
But we kept playing, despite the fact I couldn't read a lick of music, didn't know how to figure out what key some sheet music was in, didn't even know proper technique. See, I thought the beauty of the bass fiddle was you just listened to what other folks were playing and pick out about three pairs of notes and figure out real quick how you could do a little walk up or down the strings. And that beat-to-a-pulp old aluminum bass sounded pretty dadgum good.
Years later, when I got a big raise one year, I bought a 1946 Kay double bass, nicked and gouged and cracked in places, and played it for decades with my high school buddies, a band called the Villagers. Thought about that old aluminum bass from time to time, but not much. I figured some sheet-metal genius somewhere had made a one-off version of the traditional spruce bass. Sometimes I'd tell somebody about it, and they'd say something like, "You're kidding! Aluminum? No way."
A couple years ago my '46 Kay, made the same year I was, burned in a house fire. I've been looking for a good replacement ever since. Played an inexpensive late model substitute for about 18 months, but the other day drove up the Shenandoah Valley on a mission to Jerry Fretwell's bass shop in downtown Staunton, VA. He and his wife Mary Jane have a great website (www.fretwellbass.com) where you can see all these old basses he has -- a bunch of Kays, dating to the 1930s, and a rare Gibson bass, one of 85 that company made, and some other brands of old basses as well. Jerry also buys new Engelhardts, which bought up the old Kay brand, and customizes them for folks who want a fancier new one. I had my eye on a 1940 Kay and a 1952 Kay that I had spotted on his website. They were in pretty good shape and sounded great, but I fell for a 1959 Kay with a blonde finish, a new bridge and a set of Super Silver strings that Jerry installed as I watched. Soooooo much easier to play that the metal-wound strings I had on my interim base. I'm taking lessons now from Mike Mitchell over in Floyd VA (http://www.mitchellmusicco.com/) -- and learning things I should have known, oh, about 50 years ago. It's a revelation.
But the thing that really knocked me out was what I saw in Fretwell's front window: an aluminum bass, painted to look just like wood grain. In fact, it was one of three aluminum basses in the windows -- one of them flat white, and another off to the side in a bright shiny silver. They were made in the late 1920s and 1930s, all aluminum, and they were part of a collection the Fretwells have.
Here's a photo from the Fretwell website:
Turns out there was quite a production of aluminum basses in this country, starting in the late 19th century and championed, for at least a little while, by the Aluminum Company of America (ALCOA). I found a website that said the first ALCOA bases were turned out in the company's "skunk works" in Buffalo, where the company would fashion experimental products from aluminum. Eventually the company made 500 of those aluminum basses, each selling in the $200 to $240 range when new. There were other brands as well in the aluminum bass business.
The website http://kaybassrepair.com/aluminium-instruments/ notes, "The faux natural wood was well done; the top had graining and color close to that of a dark varnished tight grain spruce and the back / ribs have a faux curly figured grain patterning. AlCoA had a fifty step patented process for creating this finish. From the distance of a bandstand or stage, you’ll have trouble identifying it from a wooden instrument."
I have no clue whether that old brown-painted tin bass I borrowed in Greensboro all these years ago was an ALCOA bass or an Aluminum Musical Instrument or even one of the G.A. Pfretzschner basses, but I do know that that it looked every bit like what you'd think of when you hear the term "skunk factory." But beat up as it was, it would make a joyful noise.
But for years, after falling in love with the bass sound while playing an old brass Sousaphone in the band at Aycock Junior High School in Greensboro, I fooled around with a bass fiddle. In high school days a bunch of us got up a folk music group and decided we'd be the next Kingston Trio. I borrowed an old, beat-up, dark-brown aluminum bass fiddle from the father of a friend and we played all over Greensboro and sometimes as far away as Danville, VA. We entered a big contest where the prize was an appearance on the Arthur Smith Television Show down in Charlotte, knowing we'd win. (I recently mentioned this to a friend who, unbeknownst to me, had grown up in Greensboro, and he said, "Wait a minute, did you guys have on wide-striped shirts?" We did. He saw us that day long ago, 1963 I guess, up on a tractor trailer bandstand. And so he also saw us not win the thing, not go on to the bigtime in the Queen City, not go on to great fame and fortune in the entertainment business.)
 |
| The Villagers in 2004, Cane Creek Valley, Buncombe County |
But we kept playing, despite the fact I couldn't read a lick of music, didn't know how to figure out what key some sheet music was in, didn't even know proper technique. See, I thought the beauty of the bass fiddle was you just listened to what other folks were playing and pick out about three pairs of notes and figure out real quick how you could do a little walk up or down the strings. And that beat-to-a-pulp old aluminum bass sounded pretty dadgum good.
Years later, when I got a big raise one year, I bought a 1946 Kay double bass, nicked and gouged and cracked in places, and played it for decades with my high school buddies, a band called the Villagers. Thought about that old aluminum bass from time to time, but not much. I figured some sheet-metal genius somewhere had made a one-off version of the traditional spruce bass. Sometimes I'd tell somebody about it, and they'd say something like, "You're kidding! Aluminum? No way."
A couple years ago my '46 Kay, made the same year I was, burned in a house fire. I've been looking for a good replacement ever since. Played an inexpensive late model substitute for about 18 months, but the other day drove up the Shenandoah Valley on a mission to Jerry Fretwell's bass shop in downtown Staunton, VA. He and his wife Mary Jane have a great website (www.fretwellbass.com) where you can see all these old basses he has -- a bunch of Kays, dating to the 1930s, and a rare Gibson bass, one of 85 that company made, and some other brands of old basses as well. Jerry also buys new Engelhardts, which bought up the old Kay brand, and customizes them for folks who want a fancier new one. I had my eye on a 1940 Kay and a 1952 Kay that I had spotted on his website. They were in pretty good shape and sounded great, but I fell for a 1959 Kay with a blonde finish, a new bridge and a set of Super Silver strings that Jerry installed as I watched. Soooooo much easier to play that the metal-wound strings I had on my interim base. I'm taking lessons now from Mike Mitchell over in Floyd VA (http://www.mitchellmusicco.com/) -- and learning things I should have known, oh, about 50 years ago. It's a revelation.
But the thing that really knocked me out was what I saw in Fretwell's front window: an aluminum bass, painted to look just like wood grain. In fact, it was one of three aluminum basses in the windows -- one of them flat white, and another off to the side in a bright shiny silver. They were made in the late 1920s and 1930s, all aluminum, and they were part of a collection the Fretwells have.
Here's a photo from the Fretwell website:
 |
| Aluminum basses, every one. |
Turns out there was quite a production of aluminum basses in this country, starting in the late 19th century and championed, for at least a little while, by the Aluminum Company of America (ALCOA). I found a website that said the first ALCOA bases were turned out in the company's "skunk works" in Buffalo, where the company would fashion experimental products from aluminum. Eventually the company made 500 of those aluminum basses, each selling in the $200 to $240 range when new. There were other brands as well in the aluminum bass business.
The website http://kaybassrepair.com/aluminium-instruments/ notes, "The faux natural wood was well done; the top had graining and color close to that of a dark varnished tight grain spruce and the back / ribs have a faux curly figured grain patterning. AlCoA had a fifty step patented process for creating this finish. From the distance of a bandstand or stage, you’ll have trouble identifying it from a wooden instrument."
I have no clue whether that old brown-painted tin bass I borrowed in Greensboro all these years ago was an ALCOA bass or an Aluminum Musical Instrument or even one of the G.A. Pfretzschner basses, but I do know that that it looked every bit like what you'd think of when you hear the term "skunk factory." But beat up as it was, it would make a joyful noise.
Bill Friday, Virginia's gift to North Carolina
To contact us Click HERE
William Clyde "Bill" Friday was born 92 years ago in the Rockbridge County, Va. community of Raphine, but he moved with his family to North Carolina as a child -- a historic event that in time would change North Carolina for the better. Friday's contributions to the state can be measured in the progress North Carolina made in the second half of the 20th Century, when Friday's sure-handed guidance of the University of North Carolina system contributed to the state's economic progress, the increase in its college-going rate and especially in his raising the expectations of students from low- and middle-income families that at the 17-campus UNC system, it would always be possible to go to college.
Bill Friday was my friend, though I never could quite bring myself to call him "Bill." He did not have a doctorate and didn't particularly like to be called Dr. Friday, though many did. Most of the time it was simply "Mr. Friday," and many was the time when Friday would have some issue on his mind, or a suggestion for an editorial, or a story one of our reporters might tackle, and when I answered the phone, the conversation would start this way: "Hello, old friend. This is Bill Friday...."
I'll miss his friendship and guidance, and his even-handed approach, as will North Carolina, but perhaps our policymakers will keep his approach and his convictions in mind in future as they make tough decisions.
Here's a piece I wrote for today's Charlotte Observer about Mr. Friday:
http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/10/12/3594015/how-to-pay-debt-of-gratitude-to.html
Bill Friday was my friend, though I never could quite bring myself to call him "Bill." He did not have a doctorate and didn't particularly like to be called Dr. Friday, though many did. Most of the time it was simply "Mr. Friday," and many was the time when Friday would have some issue on his mind, or a suggestion for an editorial, or a story one of our reporters might tackle, and when I answered the phone, the conversation would start this way: "Hello, old friend. This is Bill Friday...."
I'll miss his friendship and guidance, and his even-handed approach, as will North Carolina, but perhaps our policymakers will keep his approach and his convictions in mind in future as they make tough decisions.
Here's a piece I wrote for today's Charlotte Observer about Mr. Friday:
http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/10/12/3594015/how-to-pay-debt-of-gratitude-to.html
Don't know if this tree made noise when it fell
To contact us Click HERE
So yesterday I noted that the howling wind from Sandy's remnants was still with us, as it is this morning, but that no trees had fallen. Yesterday afternoon, I rolled in from a trip down to Winston-Salem and saw that I was wrong -- that a three-stemmed (but long dead) locust tree had capsized after taking on too much wind.
If it blew over in the night or the day, no one heard it above the screech of the wind -- maybe because it's not big at all. I expect we'll get out the chain saws to make firewood billets and the splitter to bring it to size and the tractor to yank the stump this weekend. At least we shouldn't have to wait for the wood to season. I think it's ready now. Come to think of it, the storm did us a favor on this old tree.
If it blew over in the night or the day, no one heard it above the screech of the wind -- maybe because it's not big at all. I expect we'll get out the chain saws to make firewood billets and the splitter to bring it to size and the tractor to yank the stump this weekend. At least we shouldn't have to wait for the wood to season. I think it's ready now. Come to think of it, the storm did us a favor on this old tree.
29 Kasım 2012 Perşembe
Great Smoky Mountains Celebrates Christmas Past
To contact us Click HERE
Great Smoky Mountains National Park announces the 37th annual Festival of Christmas Past celebration scheduled Saturday, December 8th, 9:30 am to 4:00 pm, at the Sugarlands Visitor Center. The event, sponsored in cooperation with Great Smoky Mountains Association, is free to the public.
Festival of Christmas Past is an annual celebration of the culture of the Smoky Mountains, with an emphasis on the Christmas season. "Around Christmas time, people gathered in churches, homes, and schools and many of them celebrated the holiday through music, storytelling, and crafts. Festival of Christmas Past allows us to pause and remember some of these traditions," said Kent Cave, North District Resource Education Supervisor.
The festival will include old-time mountain music and traditional harp singing. Demonstrations of traditional domestic skills such as the making of rag rugs, apple-head dolls, quilts, and apple butter will be ongoing throughout the day. There will also be several chances to experience these traditions hands-on, with crafts to make and take home.
The Christmas Memories Walk will be held at 11:00 am and 2:00 pm to teach visitors about the spirit of the season in these mountains in the time period from the 1880s to 1930s. "The Memories Walk always gets everyone in the Christmas spirit," said Cave. "Our wonderful volunteers portray some colorful characters that you might have found in a mountain community. We have a great time developing these skits each year."
The full schedule of events for the day includes:
• 9:30 am - Old-fashioned Harp Singing led by Bruce Wheeler, Paul Clabo and Martha Graham
• 11:00 am- Old Time Music with Lost Mill String Band
• 12:00 pm- Stories of the Past panel discussion, presented by the Smoky Mountain Historical Society
• 1:00 pm - Old Time Music with the South of the River Boys
• 2:00 pm - Old Time Music with Boogertown Gap Band
• 3:00 pm - Old Time Christmas with Tony Thomas and Judy Carson
• 11:00 am -12:30 pm and 2:00 pm to 3:30 pm - "Christmas Memories Walk" - Costumed interpreters will lead a short walk from the visitor center and talk about life in the mountains during the holidays in the early days of the 1880s to the 1930s.
"Local craftspeople and musicians come together to share their ancestral skills with the public during this annual festival. We invite the public to participate in the day's activities and learn about winter life and work in the Great Smoky Mountains," said Cave.
Jeff
Hiking in the Smokies
Festival of Christmas Past is an annual celebration of the culture of the Smoky Mountains, with an emphasis on the Christmas season. "Around Christmas time, people gathered in churches, homes, and schools and many of them celebrated the holiday through music, storytelling, and crafts. Festival of Christmas Past allows us to pause and remember some of these traditions," said Kent Cave, North District Resource Education Supervisor.
The festival will include old-time mountain music and traditional harp singing. Demonstrations of traditional domestic skills such as the making of rag rugs, apple-head dolls, quilts, and apple butter will be ongoing throughout the day. There will also be several chances to experience these traditions hands-on, with crafts to make and take home.The Christmas Memories Walk will be held at 11:00 am and 2:00 pm to teach visitors about the spirit of the season in these mountains in the time period from the 1880s to 1930s. "The Memories Walk always gets everyone in the Christmas spirit," said Cave. "Our wonderful volunteers portray some colorful characters that you might have found in a mountain community. We have a great time developing these skits each year."
The full schedule of events for the day includes:
• 9:30 am - Old-fashioned Harp Singing led by Bruce Wheeler, Paul Clabo and Martha Graham
• 11:00 am- Old Time Music with Lost Mill String Band
• 12:00 pm- Stories of the Past panel discussion, presented by the Smoky Mountain Historical Society
• 1:00 pm - Old Time Music with the South of the River Boys
• 2:00 pm - Old Time Music with Boogertown Gap Band
• 3:00 pm - Old Time Christmas with Tony Thomas and Judy Carson
• 11:00 am -12:30 pm and 2:00 pm to 3:30 pm - "Christmas Memories Walk" - Costumed interpreters will lead a short walk from the visitor center and talk about life in the mountains during the holidays in the early days of the 1880s to the 1930s.
"Local craftspeople and musicians come together to share their ancestral skills with the public during this annual festival. We invite the public to participate in the day's activities and learn about winter life and work in the Great Smoky Mountains," said Cave.
Jeff
Hiking in the Smokies
"Virginia's Mark Twain"
To contact us Click HERE
It's not that far, a couple hours' drive, from Person County N.C. to Patrick County, Va. But Barnie Day's journey to published author has been going on nearly four decades now. Along the way he has been a reporter, editor and newspaper publisher; retail merchant and health clinic administrator; political commentator and sage of the Blue Ridge, business executive and farmer; banker and county manager; county supervisor and state legislator. A couple of people who should know have called him "Virginia's Mark Twain."
And as many who live around Belcher Mountain's Meadows of Dan already know, he has fought through Parkinson's disease while producing some crackerjack writing in his novel "The Last Pahvant," available on amazon.com and elsewhere, and in a new work about life in Oxford, N.C. during the Civil Rights era.
Now there's a 3,000 word story on Barnie Day in the July-August issue of Carolina Alumni Review, published by the General Alumni Association at UNC Chapel Hill. Here's a link to that story: If that doesn't work, copy and paste this into your whatchamacallit: http://www.carolinaalumnireview.com/carolinaalumnireview/20120708/?pg=22&pm=2&u1=friend
That story began 10 months ago after I read a version of "Pahvant" and told Barnie what everyone who reads the book also tells him: It ought to be in print. I sent a copy to my friend Regina Oliver last October and suggested the Review write about Barnie, who graduated from UNC in 1975. She immediately agreed, enthusiastically so, and asked me to write the piece. So last November, Barnie and I started meeting early mornings for about an hour -- the length of time it takes for my arthritic hands to go from useful to seized up -- and we talked and talked on chilly mornings, and sometimes in the evenings over some Irish whiskey -- well into the new year.
We talked about life in the 1950s and 60s when he was growing up in Roxboro, about working in factories and at little newspapers, about scrabbling his way through Chapel Hill with the help of a athletic meal ticket his roommate had ("I tell people I went through Carolina on a football scholarship, it just won't mine," he likes to say), starting up a newspaper that folded not because it wasn't good, but because it was undercapitalized, and moving through a variety of jobs over the years, all the while thinking about writing the long form and telling stories people will want to read.
The editors at the Alumni Review liked the story of Barnie's career so much that they hired one of the best photographers anywhere: Steve Exum. He came up to Meadows of Dan shortly after Spring arrived and shot wonderful photos of Barnie and Debbie Day, the restored farmhouse where they live (with secret rooms below ground where, the story goes, a moonshiner and bootlegger hid his illicit wares long ago) and the writing room where Barnie turns on the lamp many mornings hours before the sun starts to brighten the rural countryside.
Oh, meant to add this one, too, of Barnie and Debbie, with Yip.
It's not that far, a couple hours' drive, from Person County N.C. to Patrick County, Va. But Barnie Day's journey to published author has been going on nearly four decades now. Along the way he has been a reporter, editor and newspaper publisher; retail merchant and health clinic administrator; political commentator and sage of the Blue Ridge, business executive and farmer; banker and county manager; county supervisor and state legislator. A couple of people who should know have called him "Virginia's Mark Twain."
And as many who live around Belcher Mountain's Meadows of Dan already know, he has fought through Parkinson's disease while producing some crackerjack writing in his novel "The Last Pahvant," available on amazon.com and elsewhere, and in a new work about life in Oxford, N.C. during the Civil Rights era.
Now there's a 3,000 word story on Barnie Day in the July-August issue of Carolina Alumni Review, published by the General Alumni Association at UNC Chapel Hill. Here's a link to that story: If that doesn't work, copy and paste this into your whatchamacallit: http://www.carolinaalumnireview.com/carolinaalumnireview/20120708/?pg=22&pm=2&u1=friend
That story began 10 months ago after I read a version of "Pahvant" and told Barnie what everyone who reads the book also tells him: It ought to be in print. I sent a copy to my friend Regina Oliver last October and suggested the Review write about Barnie, who graduated from UNC in 1975. She immediately agreed, enthusiastically so, and asked me to write the piece. So last November, Barnie and I started meeting early mornings for about an hour -- the length of time it takes for my arthritic hands to go from useful to seized up -- and we talked and talked on chilly mornings, and sometimes in the evenings over some Irish whiskey -- well into the new year.
We talked about life in the 1950s and 60s when he was growing up in Roxboro, about working in factories and at little newspapers, about scrabbling his way through Chapel Hill with the help of a athletic meal ticket his roommate had ("I tell people I went through Carolina on a football scholarship, it just won't mine," he likes to say), starting up a newspaper that folded not because it wasn't good, but because it was undercapitalized, and moving through a variety of jobs over the years, all the while thinking about writing the long form and telling stories people will want to read.
The editors at the Alumni Review liked the story of Barnie's career so much that they hired one of the best photographers anywhere: Steve Exum. He came up to Meadows of Dan shortly after Spring arrived and shot wonderful photos of Barnie and Debbie Day, the restored farmhouse where they live (with secret rooms below ground where, the story goes, a moonshiner and bootlegger hid his illicit wares long ago) and the writing room where Barnie turns on the lamp many mornings hours before the sun starts to brighten the rural countryside.
Oh, meant to add this one, too, of Barnie and Debbie, with Yip.
The 'Skunk Works' bass
To contact us Click HERE
My career as a bass fiddle player has been only slightly more successful than my career as a pitcher in the big leagues. Which is to say, I would have starved to death during the Johnson Administration if we had depended on either one of them to put food on the table, although I played a whole lot more bass in my youth than I ever threw in organized baseball. I pretty much gave up on the baseball thing at about age 10 or 12, when I could throw a blazing fastball that nobody every knew, including me, where it was going. I once walked a fellow on a fourth pitch that went over the backstop in a sandlot game. I think they're still looking for the ball.
But for years, after falling in love with the bass sound while playing an old brass Sousaphone in the band at Aycock Junior High School in Greensboro, I fooled around with a bass fiddle. In high school days a bunch of us got up a folk music group and decided we'd be the next Kingston Trio. I borrowed an old, beat-up, dark-brown aluminum bass fiddle from the father of a friend and we played all over Greensboro and sometimes as far away as Danville, VA. We entered a big contest where the prize was an appearance on the Arthur Smith Television Show down in Charlotte, knowing we'd win. (I recently mentioned this to a friend who, unbeknownst to me, had grown up in Greensboro, and he said, "Wait a minute, did you guys have on wide-striped shirts?" We did. He saw us that day long ago, 1963 I guess, up on a tractor trailer bandstand. And so he also saw us not win the thing, not go on to the bigtime in the Queen City, not go on to great fame and fortune in the entertainment business.)
But we kept playing, despite the fact I couldn't read a lick of music, didn't know how to figure out what key some sheet music was in, didn't even know proper technique. See, I thought the beauty of the bass fiddle was you just listened to what other folks were playing and pick out about three pairs of notes and figure out real quick how you could do a little walk up or down the strings. And that beat-to-a-pulp old aluminum bass sounded pretty dadgum good.
Years later, when I got a big raise one year, I bought a 1946 Kay double bass, nicked and gouged and cracked in places, and played it for decades with my high school buddies, a band called the Villagers. Thought about that old aluminum bass from time to time, but not much. I figured some sheet-metal genius somewhere had made a one-off version of the traditional spruce bass. Sometimes I'd tell somebody about it, and they'd say something like, "You're kidding! Aluminum? No way."
A couple years ago my '46 Kay, made the same year I was, burned in a house fire. I've been looking for a good replacement ever since. Played an inexpensive late model substitute for about 18 months, but the other day drove up the Shenandoah Valley on a mission to Jerry Fretwell's bass shop in downtown Staunton, VA. He and his wife Mary Jane have a great website (www.fretwellbass.com) where you can see all these old basses he has -- a bunch of Kays, dating to the 1930s, and a rare Gibson bass, one of 85 that company made, and some other brands of old basses as well. Jerry also buys new Engelhardts, which bought up the old Kay brand, and customizes them for folks who want a fancier new one. I had my eye on a 1940 Kay and a 1952 Kay that I had spotted on his website. They were in pretty good shape and sounded great, but I fell for a 1959 Kay with a blonde finish, a new bridge and a set of Super Silver strings that Jerry installed as I watched. Soooooo much easier to play that the metal-wound strings I had on my interim base. I'm taking lessons now from Mike Mitchell over in Floyd VA (http://www.mitchellmusicco.com/) -- and learning things I should have known, oh, about 50 years ago. It's a revelation.
But the thing that really knocked me out was what I saw in Fretwell's front window: an aluminum bass, painted to look just like wood grain. In fact, it was one of three aluminum basses in the windows -- one of them flat white, and another off to the side in a bright shiny silver. They were made in the late 1920s and 1930s, all aluminum, and they were part of a collection the Fretwells have.
Here's a photo from the Fretwell website:
Turns out there was quite a production of aluminum basses in this country, starting in the late 19th century and championed, for at least a little while, by the Aluminum Company of America (ALCOA). I found a website that said the first ALCOA bases were turned out in the company's "skunk works" in Buffalo, where the company would fashion experimental products from aluminum. Eventually the company made 500 of those aluminum basses, each selling in the $200 to $240 range when new. There were other brands as well in the aluminum bass business.
The website http://kaybassrepair.com/aluminium-instruments/ notes, "The faux natural wood was well done; the top had graining and color close to that of a dark varnished tight grain spruce and the back / ribs have a faux curly figured grain patterning. AlCoA had a fifty step patented process for creating this finish. From the distance of a bandstand or stage, you’ll have trouble identifying it from a wooden instrument."
I have no clue whether that old brown-painted tin bass I borrowed in Greensboro all these years ago was an ALCOA bass or an Aluminum Musical Instrument or even one of the G.A. Pfretzschner basses, but I do know that that it looked every bit like what you'd think of when you hear the term "skunk factory." But beat up as it was, it would make a joyful noise.
But for years, after falling in love with the bass sound while playing an old brass Sousaphone in the band at Aycock Junior High School in Greensboro, I fooled around with a bass fiddle. In high school days a bunch of us got up a folk music group and decided we'd be the next Kingston Trio. I borrowed an old, beat-up, dark-brown aluminum bass fiddle from the father of a friend and we played all over Greensboro and sometimes as far away as Danville, VA. We entered a big contest where the prize was an appearance on the Arthur Smith Television Show down in Charlotte, knowing we'd win. (I recently mentioned this to a friend who, unbeknownst to me, had grown up in Greensboro, and he said, "Wait a minute, did you guys have on wide-striped shirts?" We did. He saw us that day long ago, 1963 I guess, up on a tractor trailer bandstand. And so he also saw us not win the thing, not go on to the bigtime in the Queen City, not go on to great fame and fortune in the entertainment business.)
|
| The Villagers in 2004, Cane Creek Valley, Buncombe County |
But we kept playing, despite the fact I couldn't read a lick of music, didn't know how to figure out what key some sheet music was in, didn't even know proper technique. See, I thought the beauty of the bass fiddle was you just listened to what other folks were playing and pick out about three pairs of notes and figure out real quick how you could do a little walk up or down the strings. And that beat-to-a-pulp old aluminum bass sounded pretty dadgum good.
Years later, when I got a big raise one year, I bought a 1946 Kay double bass, nicked and gouged and cracked in places, and played it for decades with my high school buddies, a band called the Villagers. Thought about that old aluminum bass from time to time, but not much. I figured some sheet-metal genius somewhere had made a one-off version of the traditional spruce bass. Sometimes I'd tell somebody about it, and they'd say something like, "You're kidding! Aluminum? No way."
A couple years ago my '46 Kay, made the same year I was, burned in a house fire. I've been looking for a good replacement ever since. Played an inexpensive late model substitute for about 18 months, but the other day drove up the Shenandoah Valley on a mission to Jerry Fretwell's bass shop in downtown Staunton, VA. He and his wife Mary Jane have a great website (www.fretwellbass.com) where you can see all these old basses he has -- a bunch of Kays, dating to the 1930s, and a rare Gibson bass, one of 85 that company made, and some other brands of old basses as well. Jerry also buys new Engelhardts, which bought up the old Kay brand, and customizes them for folks who want a fancier new one. I had my eye on a 1940 Kay and a 1952 Kay that I had spotted on his website. They were in pretty good shape and sounded great, but I fell for a 1959 Kay with a blonde finish, a new bridge and a set of Super Silver strings that Jerry installed as I watched. Soooooo much easier to play that the metal-wound strings I had on my interim base. I'm taking lessons now from Mike Mitchell over in Floyd VA (http://www.mitchellmusicco.com/) -- and learning things I should have known, oh, about 50 years ago. It's a revelation.
But the thing that really knocked me out was what I saw in Fretwell's front window: an aluminum bass, painted to look just like wood grain. In fact, it was one of three aluminum basses in the windows -- one of them flat white, and another off to the side in a bright shiny silver. They were made in the late 1920s and 1930s, all aluminum, and they were part of a collection the Fretwells have.
Here's a photo from the Fretwell website:
|
| Aluminum basses, every one. |
Turns out there was quite a production of aluminum basses in this country, starting in the late 19th century and championed, for at least a little while, by the Aluminum Company of America (ALCOA). I found a website that said the first ALCOA bases were turned out in the company's "skunk works" in Buffalo, where the company would fashion experimental products from aluminum. Eventually the company made 500 of those aluminum basses, each selling in the $200 to $240 range when new. There were other brands as well in the aluminum bass business.
The website http://kaybassrepair.com/aluminium-instruments/ notes, "The faux natural wood was well done; the top had graining and color close to that of a dark varnished tight grain spruce and the back / ribs have a faux curly figured grain patterning. AlCoA had a fifty step patented process for creating this finish. From the distance of a bandstand or stage, you’ll have trouble identifying it from a wooden instrument."
I have no clue whether that old brown-painted tin bass I borrowed in Greensboro all these years ago was an ALCOA bass or an Aluminum Musical Instrument or even one of the G.A. Pfretzschner basses, but I do know that that it looked every bit like what you'd think of when you hear the term "skunk factory." But beat up as it was, it would make a joyful noise.
Bill Friday, Virginia's gift to North Carolina
To contact us Click HERE
William Clyde "Bill" Friday was born 92 years ago in the Rockbridge County, Va. community of Raphine, but he moved with his family to North Carolina as a child -- a historic event that in time would change North Carolina for the better. Friday's contributions to the state can be measured in the progress North Carolina made in the second half of the 20th Century, when Friday's sure-handed guidance of the University of North Carolina system contributed to the state's economic progress, the increase in its college-going rate and especially in his raising the expectations of students from low- and middle-income families that at the 17-campus UNC system, it would always be possible to go to college.
Bill Friday was my friend, though I never could quite bring myself to call him "Bill." He did not have a doctorate and didn't particularly like to be called Dr. Friday, though many did. Most of the time it was simply "Mr. Friday," and many was the time when Friday would have some issue on his mind, or a suggestion for an editorial, or a story one of our reporters might tackle, and when I answered the phone, the conversation would start this way: "Hello, old friend. This is Bill Friday...."
I'll miss his friendship and guidance, and his even-handed approach, as will North Carolina, but perhaps our policymakers will keep his approach and his convictions in mind in future as they make tough decisions.
Here's a piece I wrote for today's Charlotte Observer about Mr. Friday:
http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/10/12/3594015/how-to-pay-debt-of-gratitude-to.html
Bill Friday was my friend, though I never could quite bring myself to call him "Bill." He did not have a doctorate and didn't particularly like to be called Dr. Friday, though many did. Most of the time it was simply "Mr. Friday," and many was the time when Friday would have some issue on his mind, or a suggestion for an editorial, or a story one of our reporters might tackle, and when I answered the phone, the conversation would start this way: "Hello, old friend. This is Bill Friday...."
I'll miss his friendship and guidance, and his even-handed approach, as will North Carolina, but perhaps our policymakers will keep his approach and his convictions in mind in future as they make tough decisions.
Here's a piece I wrote for today's Charlotte Observer about Mr. Friday:
http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/10/12/3594015/how-to-pay-debt-of-gratitude-to.html
Don't know if this tree made noise when it fell
To contact us Click HERE
So yesterday I noted that the howling wind from Sandy's remnants was still with us, as it is this morning, but that no trees had fallen. Yesterday afternoon, I rolled in from a trip down to Winston-Salem and saw that I was wrong -- that a three-stemmed (but long dead) locust tree had capsized after taking on too much wind.
If it blew over in the night or the day, no one heard it above the screech of the wind -- maybe because it's not big at all. I expect we'll get out the chain saws to make firewood billets and the splitter to bring it to size and the tractor to yank the stump this weekend. At least we shouldn't have to wait for the wood to season. I think it's ready now. Come to think of it, the storm did us a favor on this old tree.
If it blew over in the night or the day, no one heard it above the screech of the wind -- maybe because it's not big at all. I expect we'll get out the chain saws to make firewood billets and the splitter to bring it to size and the tractor to yank the stump this weekend. At least we shouldn't have to wait for the wood to season. I think it's ready now. Come to think of it, the storm did us a favor on this old tree.
28 Kasım 2012 Çarşamba
"Virginia's Mark Twain"
To contact us Click HERE
It's not that far, a couple hours' drive, from Person County N.C. to Patrick County, Va. But Barnie Day's journey to published author has been going on nearly four decades now. Along the way he has been a reporter, editor and newspaper publisher; retail merchant and health clinic administrator; political commentator and sage of the Blue Ridge, business executive and farmer; banker and county manager; county supervisor and state legislator. A couple of people who should know have called him "Virginia's Mark Twain."
And as many who live around Belcher Mountain's Meadows of Dan already know, he has fought through Parkinson's disease while producing some crackerjack writing in his novel "The Last Pahvant," available on amazon.com and elsewhere, and in a new work about life in Oxford, N.C. during the Civil Rights era.
Now there's a 3,000 word story on Barnie Day in the July-August issue of Carolina Alumni Review, published by the General Alumni Association at UNC Chapel Hill. Here's a link to that story: If that doesn't work, copy and paste this into your whatchamacallit: http://www.carolinaalumnireview.com/carolinaalumnireview/20120708/?pg=22&pm=2&u1=friend
That story began 10 months ago after I read a version of "Pahvant" and told Barnie what everyone who reads the book also tells him: It ought to be in print. I sent a copy to my friend Regina Oliver last October and suggested the Review write about Barnie, who graduated from UNC in 1975. She immediately agreed, enthusiastically so, and asked me to write the piece. So last November, Barnie and I started meeting early mornings for about an hour -- the length of time it takes for my arthritic hands to go from useful to seized up -- and we talked and talked on chilly mornings, and sometimes in the evenings over some Irish whiskey -- well into the new year.
We talked about life in the 1950s and 60s when he was growing up in Roxboro, about working in factories and at little newspapers, about scrabbling his way through Chapel Hill with the help of a athletic meal ticket his roommate had ("I tell people I went through Carolina on a football scholarship, it just won't mine," he likes to say), starting up a newspaper that folded not because it wasn't good, but because it was undercapitalized, and moving through a variety of jobs over the years, all the while thinking about writing the long form and telling stories people will want to read.
The editors at the Alumni Review liked the story of Barnie's career so much that they hired one of the best photographers anywhere: Steve Exum. He came up to Meadows of Dan shortly after Spring arrived and shot wonderful photos of Barnie and Debbie Day, the restored farmhouse where they live (with secret rooms below ground where, the story goes, a moonshiner and bootlegger hid his illicit wares long ago) and the writing room where Barnie turns on the lamp many mornings hours before the sun starts to brighten the rural countryside.
Oh, meant to add this one, too, of Barnie and Debbie, with Yip.
It's not that far, a couple hours' drive, from Person County N.C. to Patrick County, Va. But Barnie Day's journey to published author has been going on nearly four decades now. Along the way he has been a reporter, editor and newspaper publisher; retail merchant and health clinic administrator; political commentator and sage of the Blue Ridge, business executive and farmer; banker and county manager; county supervisor and state legislator. A couple of people who should know have called him "Virginia's Mark Twain."
And as many who live around Belcher Mountain's Meadows of Dan already know, he has fought through Parkinson's disease while producing some crackerjack writing in his novel "The Last Pahvant," available on amazon.com and elsewhere, and in a new work about life in Oxford, N.C. during the Civil Rights era.
Now there's a 3,000 word story on Barnie Day in the July-August issue of Carolina Alumni Review, published by the General Alumni Association at UNC Chapel Hill. Here's a link to that story: If that doesn't work, copy and paste this into your whatchamacallit: http://www.carolinaalumnireview.com/carolinaalumnireview/20120708/?pg=22&pm=2&u1=friend
That story began 10 months ago after I read a version of "Pahvant" and told Barnie what everyone who reads the book also tells him: It ought to be in print. I sent a copy to my friend Regina Oliver last October and suggested the Review write about Barnie, who graduated from UNC in 1975. She immediately agreed, enthusiastically so, and asked me to write the piece. So last November, Barnie and I started meeting early mornings for about an hour -- the length of time it takes for my arthritic hands to go from useful to seized up -- and we talked and talked on chilly mornings, and sometimes in the evenings over some Irish whiskey -- well into the new year.
We talked about life in the 1950s and 60s when he was growing up in Roxboro, about working in factories and at little newspapers, about scrabbling his way through Chapel Hill with the help of a athletic meal ticket his roommate had ("I tell people I went through Carolina on a football scholarship, it just won't mine," he likes to say), starting up a newspaper that folded not because it wasn't good, but because it was undercapitalized, and moving through a variety of jobs over the years, all the while thinking about writing the long form and telling stories people will want to read.
The editors at the Alumni Review liked the story of Barnie's career so much that they hired one of the best photographers anywhere: Steve Exum. He came up to Meadows of Dan shortly after Spring arrived and shot wonderful photos of Barnie and Debbie Day, the restored farmhouse where they live (with secret rooms below ground where, the story goes, a moonshiner and bootlegger hid his illicit wares long ago) and the writing room where Barnie turns on the lamp many mornings hours before the sun starts to brighten the rural countryside.
Oh, meant to add this one, too, of Barnie and Debbie, with Yip.
The 'Skunk Works' bass
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My career as a bass fiddle player has been only slightly more successful than my career as a pitcher in the big leagues. Which is to say, I would have starved to death during the Johnson Administration if we had depended on either one of them to put food on the table, although I played a whole lot more bass in my youth than I ever threw in organized baseball. I pretty much gave up on the baseball thing at about age 10 or 12, when I could throw a blazing fastball that nobody every knew, including me, where it was going. I once walked a fellow on a fourth pitch that went over the backstop in a sandlot game. I think they're still looking for the ball.
But for years, after falling in love with the bass sound while playing an old brass Sousaphone in the band at Aycock Junior High School in Greensboro, I fooled around with a bass fiddle. In high school days a bunch of us got up a folk music group and decided we'd be the next Kingston Trio. I borrowed an old, beat-up, dark-brown aluminum bass fiddle from the father of a friend and we played all over Greensboro and sometimes as far away as Danville, VA. We entered a big contest where the prize was an appearance on the Arthur Smith Television Show down in Charlotte, knowing we'd win. (I recently mentioned this to a friend who, unbeknownst to me, had grown up in Greensboro, and he said, "Wait a minute, did you guys have on wide-striped shirts?" We did. He saw us that day long ago, 1963 I guess, up on a tractor trailer bandstand. And so he also saw us not win the thing, not go on to the bigtime in the Queen City, not go on to great fame and fortune in the entertainment business.)
But we kept playing, despite the fact I couldn't read a lick of music, didn't know how to figure out what key some sheet music was in, didn't even know proper technique. See, I thought the beauty of the bass fiddle was you just listened to what other folks were playing and pick out about three pairs of notes and figure out real quick how you could do a little walk up or down the strings. And that beat-to-a-pulp old aluminum bass sounded pretty dadgum good.
Years later, when I got a big raise one year, I bought a 1946 Kay double bass, nicked and gouged and cracked in places, and played it for decades with my high school buddies, a band called the Villagers. Thought about that old aluminum bass from time to time, but not much. I figured some sheet-metal genius somewhere had made a one-off version of the traditional spruce bass. Sometimes I'd tell somebody about it, and they'd say something like, "You're kidding! Aluminum? No way."
A couple years ago my '46 Kay, made the same year I was, burned in a house fire. I've been looking for a good replacement ever since. Played an inexpensive late model substitute for about 18 months, but the other day drove up the Shenandoah Valley on a mission to Jerry Fretwell's bass shop in downtown Staunton, VA. He and his wife Mary Jane have a great website (www.fretwellbass.com) where you can see all these old basses he has -- a bunch of Kays, dating to the 1930s, and a rare Gibson bass, one of 85 that company made, and some other brands of old basses as well. Jerry also buys new Engelhardts, which bought up the old Kay brand, and customizes them for folks who want a fancier new one. I had my eye on a 1940 Kay and a 1952 Kay that I had spotted on his website. They were in pretty good shape and sounded great, but I fell for a 1959 Kay with a blonde finish, a new bridge and a set of Super Silver strings that Jerry installed as I watched. Soooooo much easier to play that the metal-wound strings I had on my interim base. I'm taking lessons now from Mike Mitchell over in Floyd VA (http://www.mitchellmusicco.com/) -- and learning things I should have known, oh, about 50 years ago. It's a revelation.
But the thing that really knocked me out was what I saw in Fretwell's front window: an aluminum bass, painted to look just like wood grain. In fact, it was one of three aluminum basses in the windows -- one of them flat white, and another off to the side in a bright shiny silver. They were made in the late 1920s and 1930s, all aluminum, and they were part of a collection the Fretwells have.
Here's a photo from the Fretwell website:
Turns out there was quite a production of aluminum basses in this country, starting in the late 19th century and championed, for at least a little while, by the Aluminum Company of America (ALCOA). I found a website that said the first ALCOA bases were turned out in the company's "skunk works" in Buffalo, where the company would fashion experimental products from aluminum. Eventually the company made 500 of those aluminum basses, each selling in the $200 to $240 range when new. There were other brands as well in the aluminum bass business.
The website http://kaybassrepair.com/aluminium-instruments/ notes, "The faux natural wood was well done; the top had graining and color close to that of a dark varnished tight grain spruce and the back / ribs have a faux curly figured grain patterning. AlCoA had a fifty step patented process for creating this finish. From the distance of a bandstand or stage, you’ll have trouble identifying it from a wooden instrument."
I have no clue whether that old brown-painted tin bass I borrowed in Greensboro all these years ago was an ALCOA bass or an Aluminum Musical Instrument or even one of the G.A. Pfretzschner basses, but I do know that that it looked every bit like what you'd think of when you hear the term "skunk factory." But beat up as it was, it would make a joyful noise.
But for years, after falling in love with the bass sound while playing an old brass Sousaphone in the band at Aycock Junior High School in Greensboro, I fooled around with a bass fiddle. In high school days a bunch of us got up a folk music group and decided we'd be the next Kingston Trio. I borrowed an old, beat-up, dark-brown aluminum bass fiddle from the father of a friend and we played all over Greensboro and sometimes as far away as Danville, VA. We entered a big contest where the prize was an appearance on the Arthur Smith Television Show down in Charlotte, knowing we'd win. (I recently mentioned this to a friend who, unbeknownst to me, had grown up in Greensboro, and he said, "Wait a minute, did you guys have on wide-striped shirts?" We did. He saw us that day long ago, 1963 I guess, up on a tractor trailer bandstand. And so he also saw us not win the thing, not go on to the bigtime in the Queen City, not go on to great fame and fortune in the entertainment business.)
|
| The Villagers in 2004, Cane Creek Valley, Buncombe County |
But we kept playing, despite the fact I couldn't read a lick of music, didn't know how to figure out what key some sheet music was in, didn't even know proper technique. See, I thought the beauty of the bass fiddle was you just listened to what other folks were playing and pick out about three pairs of notes and figure out real quick how you could do a little walk up or down the strings. And that beat-to-a-pulp old aluminum bass sounded pretty dadgum good.
Years later, when I got a big raise one year, I bought a 1946 Kay double bass, nicked and gouged and cracked in places, and played it for decades with my high school buddies, a band called the Villagers. Thought about that old aluminum bass from time to time, but not much. I figured some sheet-metal genius somewhere had made a one-off version of the traditional spruce bass. Sometimes I'd tell somebody about it, and they'd say something like, "You're kidding! Aluminum? No way."
A couple years ago my '46 Kay, made the same year I was, burned in a house fire. I've been looking for a good replacement ever since. Played an inexpensive late model substitute for about 18 months, but the other day drove up the Shenandoah Valley on a mission to Jerry Fretwell's bass shop in downtown Staunton, VA. He and his wife Mary Jane have a great website (www.fretwellbass.com) where you can see all these old basses he has -- a bunch of Kays, dating to the 1930s, and a rare Gibson bass, one of 85 that company made, and some other brands of old basses as well. Jerry also buys new Engelhardts, which bought up the old Kay brand, and customizes them for folks who want a fancier new one. I had my eye on a 1940 Kay and a 1952 Kay that I had spotted on his website. They were in pretty good shape and sounded great, but I fell for a 1959 Kay with a blonde finish, a new bridge and a set of Super Silver strings that Jerry installed as I watched. Soooooo much easier to play that the metal-wound strings I had on my interim base. I'm taking lessons now from Mike Mitchell over in Floyd VA (http://www.mitchellmusicco.com/) -- and learning things I should have known, oh, about 50 years ago. It's a revelation.
But the thing that really knocked me out was what I saw in Fretwell's front window: an aluminum bass, painted to look just like wood grain. In fact, it was one of three aluminum basses in the windows -- one of them flat white, and another off to the side in a bright shiny silver. They were made in the late 1920s and 1930s, all aluminum, and they were part of a collection the Fretwells have.
Here's a photo from the Fretwell website:
|
| Aluminum basses, every one. |
Turns out there was quite a production of aluminum basses in this country, starting in the late 19th century and championed, for at least a little while, by the Aluminum Company of America (ALCOA). I found a website that said the first ALCOA bases were turned out in the company's "skunk works" in Buffalo, where the company would fashion experimental products from aluminum. Eventually the company made 500 of those aluminum basses, each selling in the $200 to $240 range when new. There were other brands as well in the aluminum bass business.
The website http://kaybassrepair.com/aluminium-instruments/ notes, "The faux natural wood was well done; the top had graining and color close to that of a dark varnished tight grain spruce and the back / ribs have a faux curly figured grain patterning. AlCoA had a fifty step patented process for creating this finish. From the distance of a bandstand or stage, you’ll have trouble identifying it from a wooden instrument."
I have no clue whether that old brown-painted tin bass I borrowed in Greensboro all these years ago was an ALCOA bass or an Aluminum Musical Instrument or even one of the G.A. Pfretzschner basses, but I do know that that it looked every bit like what you'd think of when you hear the term "skunk factory." But beat up as it was, it would make a joyful noise.
Bill Friday, Virginia's gift to North Carolina
To contact us Click HERE
William Clyde "Bill" Friday was born 92 years ago in the Rockbridge County, Va. community of Raphine, but he moved with his family to North Carolina as a child -- a historic event that in time would change North Carolina for the better. Friday's contributions to the state can be measured in the progress North Carolina made in the second half of the 20th Century, when Friday's sure-handed guidance of the University of North Carolina system contributed to the state's economic progress, the increase in its college-going rate and especially in his raising the expectations of students from low- and middle-income families that at the 17-campus UNC system, it would always be possible to go to college.
Bill Friday was my friend, though I never could quite bring myself to call him "Bill." He did not have a doctorate and didn't particularly like to be called Dr. Friday, though many did. Most of the time it was simply "Mr. Friday," and many was the time when Friday would have some issue on his mind, or a suggestion for an editorial, or a story one of our reporters might tackle, and when I answered the phone, the conversation would start this way: "Hello, old friend. This is Bill Friday...."
I'll miss his friendship and guidance, and his even-handed approach, as will North Carolina, but perhaps our policymakers will keep his approach and his convictions in mind in future as they make tough decisions.
Here's a piece I wrote for today's Charlotte Observer about Mr. Friday:
http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/10/12/3594015/how-to-pay-debt-of-gratitude-to.html
Bill Friday was my friend, though I never could quite bring myself to call him "Bill." He did not have a doctorate and didn't particularly like to be called Dr. Friday, though many did. Most of the time it was simply "Mr. Friday," and many was the time when Friday would have some issue on his mind, or a suggestion for an editorial, or a story one of our reporters might tackle, and when I answered the phone, the conversation would start this way: "Hello, old friend. This is Bill Friday...."
I'll miss his friendship and guidance, and his even-handed approach, as will North Carolina, but perhaps our policymakers will keep his approach and his convictions in mind in future as they make tough decisions.
Here's a piece I wrote for today's Charlotte Observer about Mr. Friday:
http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/10/12/3594015/how-to-pay-debt-of-gratitude-to.html
Don't know if this tree made noise when it fell
To contact us Click HERE
So yesterday I noted that the howling wind from Sandy's remnants was still with us, as it is this morning, but that no trees had fallen. Yesterday afternoon, I rolled in from a trip down to Winston-Salem and saw that I was wrong -- that a three-stemmed (but long dead) locust tree had capsized after taking on too much wind.
If it blew over in the night or the day, no one heard it above the screech of the wind -- maybe because it's not big at all. I expect we'll get out the chain saws to make firewood billets and the splitter to bring it to size and the tractor to yank the stump this weekend. At least we shouldn't have to wait for the wood to season. I think it's ready now. Come to think of it, the storm did us a favor on this old tree.
If it blew over in the night or the day, no one heard it above the screech of the wind -- maybe because it's not big at all. I expect we'll get out the chain saws to make firewood billets and the splitter to bring it to size and the tractor to yank the stump this weekend. At least we shouldn't have to wait for the wood to season. I think it's ready now. Come to think of it, the storm did us a favor on this old tree.
Extreme Hiking: Angels Landing
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One of Zion National Park’s most famous features is the death-defying hike up to Angels Landing. The trail climbs 1200 feet in roughly 2.4 miles. The last half-mile features sharp drop-offs along a very narrow path, and includes chains for hikers to hold onto. The chains are there for a very good reason. In the past eight years alone, six people have plunged to their deaths after losing their footing along this trail.
Below is an excellent video that shows what hiking this trail is all about. Back in September my wife and I visited Zion. Although this trail is one of the most popular hikes in the park, we opted not to take it. Instead, we hiked up to Observation Point, which is a bit safer, and arguably offers better views, including a birds-eye view of Angels Landing.
If you've never been to the park, I highly recommend it. The question is, would you hike to Angels Landing? With a baby?
Jeff
Hiking in the Smokies
Below is an excellent video that shows what hiking this trail is all about. Back in September my wife and I visited Zion. Although this trail is one of the most popular hikes in the park, we opted not to take it. Instead, we hiked up to Observation Point, which is a bit safer, and arguably offers better views, including a birds-eye view of Angels Landing.
If you've never been to the park, I highly recommend it. The question is, would you hike to Angels Landing? With a baby?
Jeff
Hiking in the Smokies
27 Kasım 2012 Salı
The 'Skunk Works' bass
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My career as a bass fiddle player has been only slightly more successful than my career as a pitcher in the big leagues. Which is to say, I would have starved to death during the Johnson Administration if we had depended on either one of them to put food on the table, although I played a whole lot more bass in my youth than I ever threw in organized baseball. I pretty much gave up on the baseball thing at about age 10 or 12, when I could throw a blazing fastball that nobody every knew, including me, where it was going. I once walked a fellow on a fourth pitch that went over the backstop in a sandlot game. I think they're still looking for the ball.
But for years, after falling in love with the bass sound while playing an old brass Sousaphone in the band at Aycock Junior High School in Greensboro, I fooled around with a bass fiddle. In high school days a bunch of us got up a folk music group and decided we'd be the next Kingston Trio. I borrowed an old, beat-up, dark-brown aluminum bass fiddle from the father of a friend and we played all over Greensboro and sometimes as far away as Danville, VA. We entered a big contest where the prize was an appearance on the Arthur Smith Television Show down in Charlotte, knowing we'd win. (I recently mentioned this to a friend who, unbeknownst to me, had grown up in Greensboro, and he said, "Wait a minute, did you guys have on wide-striped shirts?" We did. He saw us that day long ago, 1963 I guess, up on a tractor trailer bandstand. And so he also saw us not win the thing, not go on to the bigtime in the Queen City, not go on to great fame and fortune in the entertainment business.)
But we kept playing, despite the fact I couldn't read a lick of music, didn't know how to figure out what key some sheet music was in, didn't even know proper technique. See, I thought the beauty of the bass fiddle was you just listened to what other folks were playing and pick out about three pairs of notes and figure out real quick how you could do a little walk up or down the strings. And that beat-to-a-pulp old aluminum bass sounded pretty dadgum good.
Years later, when I got a big raise one year, I bought a 1946 Kay double bass, nicked and gouged and cracked in places, and played it for decades with my high school buddies, a band called the Villagers. Thought about that old aluminum bass from time to time, but not much. I figured some sheet-metal genius somewhere had made a one-off version of the traditional spruce bass. Sometimes I'd tell somebody about it, and they'd say something like, "You're kidding! Aluminum? No way."
A couple years ago my '46 Kay, made the same year I was, burned in a house fire. I've been looking for a good replacement ever since. Played an inexpensive late model substitute for about 18 months, but the other day drove up the Shenandoah Valley on a mission to Jerry Fretwell's bass shop in downtown Staunton, VA. He and his wife Mary Jane have a great website (www.fretwellbass.com) where you can see all these old basses he has -- a bunch of Kays, dating to the 1930s, and a rare Gibson bass, one of 85 that company made, and some other brands of old basses as well. Jerry also buys new Engelhardts, which bought up the old Kay brand, and customizes them for folks who want a fancier new one. I had my eye on a 1940 Kay and a 1952 Kay that I had spotted on his website. They were in pretty good shape and sounded great, but I fell for a 1959 Kay with a blonde finish, a new bridge and a set of Super Silver strings that Jerry installed as I watched. Soooooo much easier to play that the metal-wound strings I had on my interim base. I'm taking lessons now from Mike Mitchell over in Floyd VA (http://www.mitchellmusicco.com/) -- and learning things I should have known, oh, about 50 years ago. It's a revelation.
But the thing that really knocked me out was what I saw in Fretwell's front window: an aluminum bass, painted to look just like wood grain. In fact, it was one of three aluminum basses in the windows -- one of them flat white, and another off to the side in a bright shiny silver. They were made in the late 1920s and 1930s, all aluminum, and they were part of a collection the Fretwells have.
Here's a photo from the Fretwell website:
Turns out there was quite a production of aluminum basses in this country, starting in the late 19th century and championed, for at least a little while, by the Aluminum Company of America (ALCOA). I found a website that said the first ALCOA bases were turned out in the company's "skunk works" in Buffalo, where the company would fashion experimental products from aluminum. Eventually the company made 500 of those aluminum basses, each selling in the $200 to $240 range when new. There were other brands as well in the aluminum bass business.
The website http://kaybassrepair.com/aluminium-instruments/ notes, "The faux natural wood was well done; the top had graining and color close to that of a dark varnished tight grain spruce and the back / ribs have a faux curly figured grain patterning. AlCoA had a fifty step patented process for creating this finish. From the distance of a bandstand or stage, you’ll have trouble identifying it from a wooden instrument."
I have no clue whether that old brown-painted tin bass I borrowed in Greensboro all these years ago was an ALCOA bass or an Aluminum Musical Instrument or even one of the G.A. Pfretzschner basses, but I do know that that it looked every bit like what you'd think of when you hear the term "skunk factory." But beat up as it was, it would make a joyful noise.
But for years, after falling in love with the bass sound while playing an old brass Sousaphone in the band at Aycock Junior High School in Greensboro, I fooled around with a bass fiddle. In high school days a bunch of us got up a folk music group and decided we'd be the next Kingston Trio. I borrowed an old, beat-up, dark-brown aluminum bass fiddle from the father of a friend and we played all over Greensboro and sometimes as far away as Danville, VA. We entered a big contest where the prize was an appearance on the Arthur Smith Television Show down in Charlotte, knowing we'd win. (I recently mentioned this to a friend who, unbeknownst to me, had grown up in Greensboro, and he said, "Wait a minute, did you guys have on wide-striped shirts?" We did. He saw us that day long ago, 1963 I guess, up on a tractor trailer bandstand. And so he also saw us not win the thing, not go on to the bigtime in the Queen City, not go on to great fame and fortune in the entertainment business.)
|
| The Villagers in 2004, Cane Creek Valley, Buncombe County |
But we kept playing, despite the fact I couldn't read a lick of music, didn't know how to figure out what key some sheet music was in, didn't even know proper technique. See, I thought the beauty of the bass fiddle was you just listened to what other folks were playing and pick out about three pairs of notes and figure out real quick how you could do a little walk up or down the strings. And that beat-to-a-pulp old aluminum bass sounded pretty dadgum good.
Years later, when I got a big raise one year, I bought a 1946 Kay double bass, nicked and gouged and cracked in places, and played it for decades with my high school buddies, a band called the Villagers. Thought about that old aluminum bass from time to time, but not much. I figured some sheet-metal genius somewhere had made a one-off version of the traditional spruce bass. Sometimes I'd tell somebody about it, and they'd say something like, "You're kidding! Aluminum? No way."
A couple years ago my '46 Kay, made the same year I was, burned in a house fire. I've been looking for a good replacement ever since. Played an inexpensive late model substitute for about 18 months, but the other day drove up the Shenandoah Valley on a mission to Jerry Fretwell's bass shop in downtown Staunton, VA. He and his wife Mary Jane have a great website (www.fretwellbass.com) where you can see all these old basses he has -- a bunch of Kays, dating to the 1930s, and a rare Gibson bass, one of 85 that company made, and some other brands of old basses as well. Jerry also buys new Engelhardts, which bought up the old Kay brand, and customizes them for folks who want a fancier new one. I had my eye on a 1940 Kay and a 1952 Kay that I had spotted on his website. They were in pretty good shape and sounded great, but I fell for a 1959 Kay with a blonde finish, a new bridge and a set of Super Silver strings that Jerry installed as I watched. Soooooo much easier to play that the metal-wound strings I had on my interim base. I'm taking lessons now from Mike Mitchell over in Floyd VA (http://www.mitchellmusicco.com/) -- and learning things I should have known, oh, about 50 years ago. It's a revelation.
But the thing that really knocked me out was what I saw in Fretwell's front window: an aluminum bass, painted to look just like wood grain. In fact, it was one of three aluminum basses in the windows -- one of them flat white, and another off to the side in a bright shiny silver. They were made in the late 1920s and 1930s, all aluminum, and they were part of a collection the Fretwells have.
Here's a photo from the Fretwell website:
|
| Aluminum basses, every one. |
Turns out there was quite a production of aluminum basses in this country, starting in the late 19th century and championed, for at least a little while, by the Aluminum Company of America (ALCOA). I found a website that said the first ALCOA bases were turned out in the company's "skunk works" in Buffalo, where the company would fashion experimental products from aluminum. Eventually the company made 500 of those aluminum basses, each selling in the $200 to $240 range when new. There were other brands as well in the aluminum bass business.
The website http://kaybassrepair.com/aluminium-instruments/ notes, "The faux natural wood was well done; the top had graining and color close to that of a dark varnished tight grain spruce and the back / ribs have a faux curly figured grain patterning. AlCoA had a fifty step patented process for creating this finish. From the distance of a bandstand or stage, you’ll have trouble identifying it from a wooden instrument."
I have no clue whether that old brown-painted tin bass I borrowed in Greensboro all these years ago was an ALCOA bass or an Aluminum Musical Instrument or even one of the G.A. Pfretzschner basses, but I do know that that it looked every bit like what you'd think of when you hear the term "skunk factory." But beat up as it was, it would make a joyful noise.
Bill Friday, Virginia's gift to North Carolina
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William Clyde "Bill" Friday was born 92 years ago in the Rockbridge County, Va. community of Raphine, but he moved with his family to North Carolina as a child -- a historic event that in time would change North Carolina for the better. Friday's contributions to the state can be measured in the progress North Carolina made in the second half of the 20th Century, when Friday's sure-handed guidance of the University of North Carolina system contributed to the state's economic progress, the increase in its college-going rate and especially in his raising the expectations of students from low- and middle-income families that at the 17-campus UNC system, it would always be possible to go to college.
Bill Friday was my friend, though I never could quite bring myself to call him "Bill." He did not have a doctorate and didn't particularly like to be called Dr. Friday, though many did. Most of the time it was simply "Mr. Friday," and many was the time when Friday would have some issue on his mind, or a suggestion for an editorial, or a story one of our reporters might tackle, and when I answered the phone, the conversation would start this way: "Hello, old friend. This is Bill Friday...."
I'll miss his friendship and guidance, and his even-handed approach, as will North Carolina, but perhaps our policymakers will keep his approach and his convictions in mind in future as they make tough decisions.
Here's a piece I wrote for today's Charlotte Observer about Mr. Friday:
http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/10/12/3594015/how-to-pay-debt-of-gratitude-to.html
Bill Friday was my friend, though I never could quite bring myself to call him "Bill." He did not have a doctorate and didn't particularly like to be called Dr. Friday, though many did. Most of the time it was simply "Mr. Friday," and many was the time when Friday would have some issue on his mind, or a suggestion for an editorial, or a story one of our reporters might tackle, and when I answered the phone, the conversation would start this way: "Hello, old friend. This is Bill Friday...."
I'll miss his friendship and guidance, and his even-handed approach, as will North Carolina, but perhaps our policymakers will keep his approach and his convictions in mind in future as they make tough decisions.
Here's a piece I wrote for today's Charlotte Observer about Mr. Friday:
http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/10/12/3594015/how-to-pay-debt-of-gratitude-to.html
Don't know if this tree made noise when it fell
To contact us Click HERE
So yesterday I noted that the howling wind from Sandy's remnants was still with us, as it is this morning, but that no trees had fallen. Yesterday afternoon, I rolled in from a trip down to Winston-Salem and saw that I was wrong -- that a three-stemmed (but long dead) locust tree had capsized after taking on too much wind.
If it blew over in the night or the day, no one heard it above the screech of the wind -- maybe because it's not big at all. I expect we'll get out the chain saws to make firewood billets and the splitter to bring it to size and the tractor to yank the stump this weekend. At least we shouldn't have to wait for the wood to season. I think it's ready now. Come to think of it, the storm did us a favor on this old tree.
If it blew over in the night or the day, no one heard it above the screech of the wind -- maybe because it's not big at all. I expect we'll get out the chain saws to make firewood billets and the splitter to bring it to size and the tractor to yank the stump this weekend. At least we shouldn't have to wait for the wood to season. I think it's ready now. Come to think of it, the storm did us a favor on this old tree.
An honest American buck -- all 12 points
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Stopped by some friends' house the other evening for a holiday glass or two with Debbie and Barnie Day, who live down the road from us, and heard the best deer story I've heard in quite a while. Up here on Belcher Mountain, folks take their deer hunting the same way they take their deer meat: seriously.
This one involves 14-year-old Ryan Shorkey, a young man from Charlotte who can shoot the daylights out of whatever he's aiming at. I took some photos of him and his Belcher Mountain pals on the first day of dove season in September at the Days' place. When the first or second dove flew over, Ryan was up and on it so fast I missed the shot. Ryan didn't.
I knew from his father, Steven Shorkey, that Ryan was an excellent competition shooter. He has hunted since he was 10. And if you give his father half a chance, he'll let on how proud he is of Ryan: "You may know he is an accomplished shot-gunner. He shootson a competitive sporting clays team (about 30 kids aged 9 to 18) out ofRichburg, SC called the Rocky Creek Clay Dusters. Their home club is RockyCreek Sporting Clays. He shoots in tournaments all over SC, and this past year,ranged as far as Nashville, TN (Southeast Regional Championship) and Macon, GA(NWTF annual tournament, where he won a new shotgun for being high scorer inthe preliminary round). Those last two tournaments are for "allcomers", i.e. mostly men, not just for kids."
Ryan lives and breathes hunting. Watches hunting shows. Works on his shooting. Turned down a ticket to a UNC football game to hunt. But even before the season began, he was working for this day, his father says:
"There are not a lot of 14-year old boys (or men for thatmatter) that will sit in a deer stand from before sun-up till 2PM, peeing inan empty Gatorade bottle when needed, to hunt deer. He is a determined littleman.
"Ryan put in the time on this buck. We scouted the area inlate August with Alan Black to determine where to put the stands. Then went upthe following weekend to do just that. Installed a trail cam and salt licks too(at a point in the season when it was legal). He moved his stand twice in theensuing weeks to have a better view/shot at whatever might appear."
When I saw Ryan Saturday evening, warming his shins by a roaring fire in the Days' all-purpose living room, he was a little down but still excited from the hunt. Early that morning, in frigid weather hovering somewhere around 29 degrees F, Ryan was in his deer stand over on the yon side of Woolwine. When he got a good look at the deer, it was right below him -- and it was an astounding 12-point buck. Now, the only 12-point buck most hunters will ever see up close up will be in a wildlife magazine.
Ryan shot, but wasn't sure he shot the buck where he meant to. The buck bounded off. Ryan and his dad went after him an hour later. There were plenty of signs of blood, but Ryan and the hunting party he was with couldn't find him. They searched all day, but that buck was nowhere to be found. It was bitter cold, his dad recalls, "with winds gusting to 30 mph, making thewind chill likely in the high teens. But he didn't say a word, he just put hishead down and on he went. He was crawling on his hands and knees to follow theblood trail."
The next morning Ryan had to be in church in Charlotte, where he is an acolyte. His dad was having a little car trouble, and enlisted some local guys who can fix anything with moving parts to replace a bad alternator on the SUV.
Meantime, Barnie, councilor to many people from many different walks of this life, was thinking about that 12-point buck and the young man who shot it. Be a shame to let that thing go, undetected down there in the bush, he thought. So he got on the horn and organized a search party to go after it -- Alan Black, Joel Honse, Darryl Conner's blue healer, Smokey, and Steven, and off they went.
It was rugged terrain, Barnie recalls: "Rough, up and down country. Isolated, with good thickets, ample creeks, heavy mast crop. Prime bigbuck habitat."
It was Alan Black, the county attorney who, like many folks up here, can do anything, who found the deer after a few hours search Sunday. It was gut shot, and instead of heading for water downhill, the buck had circled behind and above Ryan, and laid up, Barnie said, in a "terrible thicket." They manhandled it out, rustled it into the back of a pickup truck and took its portrait.
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Steven Shorkey had this to say: "Lots of guys get 8-points, many fewer get 10-points.Fewer still 12 -points or better. That is the "Rhodes Scholarship" ofdeer hunting. Hopefully it isn't all downhill from here regarding trophywhitetail bucks for him. I think it will just make him a more discriminatingdeer hunter from here on out. The vast majority of deer hunters will go theirentire lives without even seeing a 12-point, much less get a shot at one, muchless kill it."
This one involves 14-year-old Ryan Shorkey, a young man from Charlotte who can shoot the daylights out of whatever he's aiming at. I took some photos of him and his Belcher Mountain pals on the first day of dove season in September at the Days' place. When the first or second dove flew over, Ryan was up and on it so fast I missed the shot. Ryan didn't.
I knew from his father, Steven Shorkey, that Ryan was an excellent competition shooter. He has hunted since he was 10. And if you give his father half a chance, he'll let on how proud he is of Ryan: "You may know he is an accomplished shot-gunner. He shootson a competitive sporting clays team (about 30 kids aged 9 to 18) out ofRichburg, SC called the Rocky Creek Clay Dusters. Their home club is RockyCreek Sporting Clays. He shoots in tournaments all over SC, and this past year,ranged as far as Nashville, TN (Southeast Regional Championship) and Macon, GA(NWTF annual tournament, where he won a new shotgun for being high scorer inthe preliminary round). Those last two tournaments are for "allcomers", i.e. mostly men, not just for kids."
Ryan lives and breathes hunting. Watches hunting shows. Works on his shooting. Turned down a ticket to a UNC football game to hunt. But even before the season began, he was working for this day, his father says:
"There are not a lot of 14-year old boys (or men for thatmatter) that will sit in a deer stand from before sun-up till 2PM, peeing inan empty Gatorade bottle when needed, to hunt deer. He is a determined littleman.
"Ryan put in the time on this buck. We scouted the area inlate August with Alan Black to determine where to put the stands. Then went upthe following weekend to do just that. Installed a trail cam and salt licks too(at a point in the season when it was legal). He moved his stand twice in theensuing weeks to have a better view/shot at whatever might appear."
When I saw Ryan Saturday evening, warming his shins by a roaring fire in the Days' all-purpose living room, he was a little down but still excited from the hunt. Early that morning, in frigid weather hovering somewhere around 29 degrees F, Ryan was in his deer stand over on the yon side of Woolwine. When he got a good look at the deer, it was right below him -- and it was an astounding 12-point buck. Now, the only 12-point buck most hunters will ever see up close up will be in a wildlife magazine.
Ryan shot, but wasn't sure he shot the buck where he meant to. The buck bounded off. Ryan and his dad went after him an hour later. There were plenty of signs of blood, but Ryan and the hunting party he was with couldn't find him. They searched all day, but that buck was nowhere to be found. It was bitter cold, his dad recalls, "with winds gusting to 30 mph, making thewind chill likely in the high teens. But he didn't say a word, he just put hishead down and on he went. He was crawling on his hands and knees to follow theblood trail."
The next morning Ryan had to be in church in Charlotte, where he is an acolyte. His dad was having a little car trouble, and enlisted some local guys who can fix anything with moving parts to replace a bad alternator on the SUV.
Meantime, Barnie, councilor to many people from many different walks of this life, was thinking about that 12-point buck and the young man who shot it. Be a shame to let that thing go, undetected down there in the bush, he thought. So he got on the horn and organized a search party to go after it -- Alan Black, Joel Honse, Darryl Conner's blue healer, Smokey, and Steven, and off they went.
It was rugged terrain, Barnie recalls: "Rough, up and down country. Isolated, with good thickets, ample creeks, heavy mast crop. Prime bigbuck habitat."
It was Alan Black, the county attorney who, like many folks up here, can do anything, who found the deer after a few hours search Sunday. It was gut shot, and instead of heading for water downhill, the buck had circled behind and above Ryan, and laid up, Barnie said, in a "terrible thicket." They manhandled it out, rustled it into the back of a pickup truck and took its portrait.
Steven Shorkey had this to say: "Lots of guys get 8-points, many fewer get 10-points.Fewer still 12 -points or better. That is the "Rhodes Scholarship" ofdeer hunting. Hopefully it isn't all downhill from here regarding trophywhitetail bucks for him. I think it will just make him a more discriminatingdeer hunter from here on out. The vast majority of deer hunters will go theirentire lives without even seeing a 12-point, much less get a shot at one, muchless kill it."
Forest Service Responds to Black Mountain Wildfire
To contact us Click HERE
The U.S. Forest Service and partners are responding to a wildfire burning approximately 215 acres near the Black Mountain and Springer Mountain area of the Chattahoochee National Forest near the Dawson, Gilmer, Fannin and Lumpkin County lines. A large response team has been mobilized, including the local U.S. Forest Service Type 3 Incident Management Team and crews from a neighboring national forest. Partners including Georgia Forestry Commission, Lumpkin County Fire Department and Georgia Department of Natural Resources are assisting in the response. The fire was first reported on November 24 around 7:00 p.m. The cause of the fire is under investigation.
Officials have not identified any structures being threatened at this time. The wildfire is not threatening Amicalola Falls State Park or Len Foote Hike Inn.
Officials are advising the public to avoid the area. A temporary closure has been issued for the Appalachian Trail approach trail from its crossing on forest road 28-2 at Nimblewill Gap to the Springer Mountain trailhead parking area on forest road 42, including the Black Mountain trail shelter. Forest road 46 is also temporarily closed between Nimblewill Gap and High Shoals Church Road.
You can view vicinity and local area maps showing the location of the Black Mountain Fire by clicking here.
Jeff
Hiking in the Smokies
Officials have not identified any structures being threatened at this time. The wildfire is not threatening Amicalola Falls State Park or Len Foote Hike Inn.
Officials are advising the public to avoid the area. A temporary closure has been issued for the Appalachian Trail approach trail from its crossing on forest road 28-2 at Nimblewill Gap to the Springer Mountain trailhead parking area on forest road 42, including the Black Mountain trail shelter. Forest road 46 is also temporarily closed between Nimblewill Gap and High Shoals Church Road.
You can view vicinity and local area maps showing the location of the Black Mountain Fire by clicking here.
Jeff
Hiking in the Smokies
26 Kasım 2012 Pazartesi
"Virginia's Mark Twain"
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It's not that far, a couple hours' drive, from Person County N.C. to Patrick County, Va. But Barnie Day's journey to published author has been going on nearly four decades now. Along the way he has been a reporter, editor and newspaper publisher; retail merchant and health clinic administrator; political commentator and sage of the Blue Ridge, business executive and farmer; banker and county manager; county supervisor and state legislator. A couple of people who should know have called him "Virginia's Mark Twain."
And as many who live around Belcher Mountain's Meadows of Dan already know, he has fought through Parkinson's disease while producing some crackerjack writing in his novel "The Last Pahvant," available on amazon.com and elsewhere, and in a new work about life in Oxford, N.C. during the Civil Rights era.
Now there's a 3,000 word story on Barnie Day in the July-August issue of Carolina Alumni Review, published by the General Alumni Association at UNC Chapel Hill. Here's a link to that story: If that doesn't work, copy and paste this into your whatchamacallit: http://www.carolinaalumnireview.com/carolinaalumnireview/20120708/?pg=22&pm=2&u1=friend
That story began 10 months ago after I read a version of "Pahvant" and told Barnie what everyone who reads the book also tells him: It ought to be in print. I sent a copy to my friend Regina Oliver last October and suggested the Review write about Barnie, who graduated from UNC in 1975. She immediately agreed, enthusiastically so, and asked me to write the piece. So last November, Barnie and I started meeting early mornings for about an hour -- the length of time it takes for my arthritic hands to go from useful to seized up -- and we talked and talked on chilly mornings, and sometimes in the evenings over some Irish whiskey -- well into the new year.
We talked about life in the 1950s and 60s when he was growing up in Roxboro, about working in factories and at little newspapers, about scrabbling his way through Chapel Hill with the help of a athletic meal ticket his roommate had ("I tell people I went through Carolina on a football scholarship, it just won't mine," he likes to say), starting up a newspaper that folded not because it wasn't good, but because it was undercapitalized, and moving through a variety of jobs over the years, all the while thinking about writing the long form and telling stories people will want to read.
The editors at the Alumni Review liked the story of Barnie's career so much that they hired one of the best photographers anywhere: Steve Exum. He came up to Meadows of Dan shortly after Spring arrived and shot wonderful photos of Barnie and Debbie Day, the restored farmhouse where they live (with secret rooms below ground where, the story goes, a moonshiner and bootlegger hid his illicit wares long ago) and the writing room where Barnie turns on the lamp many mornings hours before the sun starts to brighten the rural countryside.
Oh, meant to add this one, too, of Barnie and Debbie, with Yip.
It's not that far, a couple hours' drive, from Person County N.C. to Patrick County, Va. But Barnie Day's journey to published author has been going on nearly four decades now. Along the way he has been a reporter, editor and newspaper publisher; retail merchant and health clinic administrator; political commentator and sage of the Blue Ridge, business executive and farmer; banker and county manager; county supervisor and state legislator. A couple of people who should know have called him "Virginia's Mark Twain."
And as many who live around Belcher Mountain's Meadows of Dan already know, he has fought through Parkinson's disease while producing some crackerjack writing in his novel "The Last Pahvant," available on amazon.com and elsewhere, and in a new work about life in Oxford, N.C. during the Civil Rights era.
Now there's a 3,000 word story on Barnie Day in the July-August issue of Carolina Alumni Review, published by the General Alumni Association at UNC Chapel Hill. Here's a link to that story: If that doesn't work, copy and paste this into your whatchamacallit: http://www.carolinaalumnireview.com/carolinaalumnireview/20120708/?pg=22&pm=2&u1=friend
That story began 10 months ago after I read a version of "Pahvant" and told Barnie what everyone who reads the book also tells him: It ought to be in print. I sent a copy to my friend Regina Oliver last October and suggested the Review write about Barnie, who graduated from UNC in 1975. She immediately agreed, enthusiastically so, and asked me to write the piece. So last November, Barnie and I started meeting early mornings for about an hour -- the length of time it takes for my arthritic hands to go from useful to seized up -- and we talked and talked on chilly mornings, and sometimes in the evenings over some Irish whiskey -- well into the new year.
We talked about life in the 1950s and 60s when he was growing up in Roxboro, about working in factories and at little newspapers, about scrabbling his way through Chapel Hill with the help of a athletic meal ticket his roommate had ("I tell people I went through Carolina on a football scholarship, it just won't mine," he likes to say), starting up a newspaper that folded not because it wasn't good, but because it was undercapitalized, and moving through a variety of jobs over the years, all the while thinking about writing the long form and telling stories people will want to read.
The editors at the Alumni Review liked the story of Barnie's career so much that they hired one of the best photographers anywhere: Steve Exum. He came up to Meadows of Dan shortly after Spring arrived and shot wonderful photos of Barnie and Debbie Day, the restored farmhouse where they live (with secret rooms below ground where, the story goes, a moonshiner and bootlegger hid his illicit wares long ago) and the writing room where Barnie turns on the lamp many mornings hours before the sun starts to brighten the rural countryside.
Oh, meant to add this one, too, of Barnie and Debbie, with Yip.
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