There’s a vegetable stand we like to stop at in the summer once local veggies and fruit start coming in. It’s on a side road so not everyone knows about it. In the front yard of a small well kept brick house, protected from the elements by one of those portable carports with the plastic roofs.  It’s on the honor system. Prices are written on a white board, and you do your shopping, then put the money in a slot in the top of a metal box. Last week when we stopped, there were beautiful peaches, yellow squash, silver queen corn, white potatoes, cucumbers, and…. wait for it …. home grown tomatoes.  We bought some of almost everything. And that night had a memorable vegetable supper of fried yellow squash, mashed potatoes, corn on the cob, and coleslaw. Along with iron skillet cornbread, sliced tomatoes and vidalia onion. And fried peach pies for dessert. It all tasted wonderful, and brought back memories of my grandmother’s kitchen when I visited every year on summer break. All that was missing from the meal was her green beans, long cooked with pork belly. This was before pork belly became a staple as an appetizer in hipster restaurants. A humble cut of meat marked up astronomically. I love it as a seasoning agent in beans. On a bed of arugula with five spice maple glaze, not as much. My grandparent’s house was on a nice sized piece of land in Cherokee County, where I learned to shoot but not really hunt. I was way too tender-hearted to actually kill anything. My grandfather plowed up a half acre of bottomland for my grandmother’s garden spot. And in case you don’t think in acres, a half acre vegetable garden is a big ass garden. I would look out my bedroom window in the mornings and see her broad brimmed straw hat in amongst the pole beans. She had a short three legged pine stool my grandfather had made for her, that she could carry around, and sit and weed, or pick. A large old apple tree stood at one end of the garden, and Read more [...]

I don’t talk much to my friends any more. Mostly we just text. Or like stuff on Facebook. Sign of the times I guess and I don’t worry too much about it. Wading in the shallow water of connection, if in fact that’s what it is. But only so much can be said in a text, and sometimes a phone call fills the need better. And of course there’s no real substitute for face to face in person quality time. My friend Scottie and I have known each other for thirty years. We've always kept in touch, but between life, work, and raising families we haven’t spent much real time together. That began to change this year when he invited me down to his house in the city, and we ended up going out to Miller Union where his brother Steven is chef owner. To my taste, Miller Union is still my favorite Atlanta restaurant, and one of the best in the country. We were late arriving, and just sat at the bar and had a fabulous meal. My daughter Sophie worked here for a time, and some of the staff drop by to ask about her. Steven’s business partner Neal says he has a raise waiting should she ever want to come back. She was a food lover before she ever came here but it was this restaurant that helped shape her knowledge. It’s that kind of place.  After the kitchen closed Steven came out and sat with us, and we shared some good wine and company. Steven won the James Beard award for best chef Southeast, and had a new cookbook out, which I was reading. The conversation turned to food, and then writing. His editor had been Anthony Bourdain’s editor, and we spoke of our admiration for Bourdain’s work, and a meaningful life cut short. It was nice hanging out, and Steven picked up the check, which was kind. Afterward Scott and I walked up to Northside Tavern, one of Atlanta’s great dive bars, and caught a really killer band doing Allman Brothers covers. All in all, an evening well spent, and we made a promise to get together again sooner rather than later.    So Read more [...]

Over the last year or so we’ve been learning to dance. Waltz, East Coast Swing, and Two Step are a few we’ve dabbled in. It started with a trip to the local American Legion, Club 201. Certain nights of the week they focus on a particular dance style, and for a nominal fee, you show up, get an hour of instruction, and then the floor opens up for practice and socializing. Music is usually provided by a DJ, or sometimes a band on the weekends. There’s almost always a good turn out.  And it’s a hoot. On our first visit, we met an Irish couple who really knew how to do it. Johnna danced with the gentleman some, learned a few things. I danced with his wife, who showed me some of the basics. And though she didn’t say much, what she did say was in a lovely Northern Irish lilt, the sound of which lightened my steps. Immediately I figured out I knew basically nothing. Which could have been disheartening but wasn’t - it just piqued my interest more. What she did tell me, in no uncertain terms, was that the man has to lead. The woman follows the man’s lead. And there lies the rub. The man must learn the steps and moves so he is able to lead. And in addition, keep it in his head what is coming next. So, not only does the man have to know where he and his partner are within the dance, he has to initiate where you’re going. No slacking. Having always been a bit of a slacker, I was at an immediate disadvantage. Also, before I go too far down the rabbit hole in the wrong direction, the correct term for a dance couple is not man and woman, but leader and follower. Still, at American Legion Post 201, generally the man is expected to lead. And it is these expectations that both curse and inspire.  After several visits to the Legion, we agreed that further lessons were needed, more one on one instruction. So every other Tuesday that’s what we’ve been doing, with another couple who are friends of ours and at a similar novice level. The four of us Read more [...]

A few days ago I’m sitting on the front porch with my brother, and we hear a car coming up the driveway toward the house. It’s fairly remote out here and we don’t often get unexpected guests so we’re watching to see who it could be. Probably just a lost tourist or someone trying to buy property.  A nice new Subaru comes into view, pulls up and parks. A young woman, tatted up, ball cap, work boots, gets out and walks toward us. Turns out she is the niece of the lady who keeps horses in our pasture, and she’s just here to check their water. There’s been a bit of a drought, and it’s hot. I ask her how Mary is doing. That’s her aunt, the horse lady. Her husband passed away from cancer last year, leaving her with a farm to work, a trail riding business and a young teenage daughter. Quite a few horses to take care of. Life isn’t always fair. She usually keeps two or three in our pasture here. They’re no trouble, and pretty to look at. We keep some sweet feed and horse treats on hand and they will usually come to the fence when they see us coming. Mary cycles different ones in month to month, but one horse is pretty much a constant. King Phillip is his name, and he’s a big, noble looking animal. Solid black with a white blaze face. He’s also old, twenty eight, and lame in his front legs. Mary had told me a couple of years ago that he was going to have to be put down because of his legs, that he’s in a lot of pain. But he’s still here, and we try to treat him a little special. Seems like the old guy deserves it. She usually puts young horses in here with him. He’s very calm, and they stick close to him as he moves around the hillside, showing them the ropes so to speak. Or in this case the fenceline. The young ones are inexperienced and can be excitable. Phillip helps with their education, in his own stoic way. Horses herd naturally, but don’t always necessarily get along. King Phillip gets along with everybody.      Hadley. Read more [...]

I’ve started walking in the mornings lately. It began as a need for exercise, which I know I need more of, but is also a chance to just move, put on my shoes and get out into the world. Today I take a different route than usual, the less scenic route, and it immediately takes me up a long hill, several hundred yards of steady grade. I drive from my house almost every day up this hill, and usually see someone standing at the top. In my car driving thought process, for a moment of leisure I assumed. Wrong. The truth is, they were stopping to catch their breath.  Which I do now for a minute in the shade. Then I walk on, down Peachtree Street, past Houston’s with their shaded outdoor patio, birds in the trees, jazz piping out softly over the tables. Atlanta is known as the city in a forest, and the birds will wake you up in the morning. Not city birds like pigeons or starlings, but song birds singing away, wrens, nuthatches, chickadees. Plenty of mature hardwoods and green space back in these neighborhoods, and the birds thrive.  It’s late morning in the middle of our first heatwave, and it is ninety degrees already. I walk a quarter mile or so and turn off on Bennett Street, looking for the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia. MOCAGA. I know it’s here somewhere, and have been meaning to find it and have a look. As with other things, people move to the city for the museums and culture, and then never quite make it actually to the museum. And our culture comes from our car radios.  I find it at the end of the street, among some warehouses, across from a large power station. The doors are locked and it’s dark inside. But it’s still a few minutes before opening so I sit down under the front awning and wait. Did I mention we’re in the middle of a heat wave? It’s ninety degrees on the concrete steps where I’m sitting.  After twenty minutes or so, the lights come on inside and a woman comes to the door, unlocks it, and picks Read more [...]

A few years ago I rode on a cross country motorcycle trip with some friends. We started in Tennessee and took mostly two lane roads across Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Texas, heading for Santa Fe, New Mexico. It was the middle of summer, riding across Texas was swelteringly hot, and we pit stopped for gas and a cold drink. Bikes parked, sitting in the shade sweating, a beat up Ford pick-up coughs to a stop and parks. A ragged cowboy steps out, gives us a wry look. “Welcome to Snyder, boys. You in the armpit of Texas!” “Appreciate it. Who are you, the mayor?” My buddy replies. Approaching Santa Fe from Albuquerque,  the road winds up and up into the high desert.  Coming around a curve in the middle of nowhere, a simple adobe church sits alone. It’s a four hundred year old Spanish mission, beautiful in its simplicity. Built in the 1600’s by Spanish friars bringing Christianity to the indigenious people here, it was remote and dangerous work. The natives, having been here a thousand years, were understandably reluctant to change. But the Spanish were not easily dissuaded, and often brutal. As with most of European colonization, not one of Christianity’s finest moments.      In Santa Fe we meet my brother, coming from California, and the (now) four of us ride up from Santa Fe over the mountain plateaus to Taos, crossing over the Rio Grande on a suspension bridge nine hundred feet above the river. It's a heart stopping view, and would give a person vertigo looking down over either side. That evening we have some good Mexican food at a local cantina and wander around the old Taos Plaza looking at remnants and reproductions of the Wild West. Outside of town, Taos Pueblo, a Unesco World Heritage sight, has been home to the Tiwa tribe for over a thousand years, one of the oldest continually inhabited sites in America. Kit Carson’s home, the famous Indian fighter, scout, and mountain man, is a museum now. On one Read more [...]

On a sunny day in May I drive out to Grayson, GA to have a look at a vintage motorcycle for sale. It’s a 1976 Honda Goldwing GL1000, an old school 70’s superbike, candy apple red. I bring my son along in case there’s any heavy lifting involved, and if I buy it, he can drive my truck back home and I'll ride the bike. Plus he’s good company and might learn something. And on a further positive note, there’s always the possibility I might learn something myself. It’s been known to happen. The bike’s owner, let’s call him Jeff, has a nice spread out in the country, with acres of lawn, and an eight car garage for his car and bike collection. The garage is as big as his house. My kind of guy. He’s a baby boomer, in his late seventies now, and bought the bike about ten years ago from the estate of his best friend and riding buddy. He’s ridden it on and off since then but these bikes are big and heavy, and it’s gotten to be a little too much for him to handle. He’s still riding, but on a trike now.  We open up the doors of the garage, and take the cover off the Goldwing. I’ve been looking for one for a while, watching as collectors are rediscovering them, driving prices up. Looking over this one and talking to Jeff, it’s obvious it has a lot of sentimental value for him, that he and his friend had spent many a day riding it together. Sharing that thing that serious motorcyclists all have in common, the love of the form and function of motorcycles, the purposeful beauty. And then the riding experience itself, the organic pleasure of the ride, wind in the hair, of really being out in the world, at speed, on a beautiful day. This is a bike that calls for that certain vintage gear, the worn leather jacket, the goggles, the look of a WWI ace fighter pilot, climbing from the cockpit of his Sopwith Camel.  While I inspect the motorcycle, Jeff and Jack are bonding over engineering. Jack is in school studying construction and facilities Read more [...]

Frederick Buechner as photographed in 1950 by Carl Van Vechten I've written about Frederick Beuchner (BEEK-ner) before. An American writer, novelist, poet, and theologian, he has published more than thirty books, been a National Book Award finalist and nominee for a Pulitzer Prize. He lives in Vermont and is still writing at the age of ninety five.  Born in New York City in 1926, his family moved frequently as Beuchner’s father searched for work. In The Sacred Journey, Beuchner wrote, “Virtually every year of my life until I was fourteen, I lived in a different place, had different people take care of me, went to a different school…Home was not a place to me when I was a child. It was people.” Then, even this changed in 1936 when Beuchner was ten. His father committed suicide, a result of his conviction that he had been a failure. But the young Beuchner persevered and, after high school, was admitted to Princeton University. In the middle of his tenure there, he was drafted into the army. This particular piece came from a remembrance of that time, 1944-1946. The Need to Praise       THE NEXT WINTER I sat in Army fatigues somewhere near Anniston, Alabama, eating my supper out of a mess kit. The infantry training battalion that I had been assigned to was on bivouac. There was a cold drizzle of rain, and everything was mud. The sun had gone down. I was still hungry when I finished and noticed that a man nearby had something left over that he was not going to eat. It was a turnip, and when I asked him if I could have it, he tossed it over to me. I missed the catch, the turnip fell to the ground, but I wanted it so badly that I picked it up and started eating it anyway, mud and all. And then, as I ate it, time deepened and slowed down again. With a lurch of the heart that is real to me still, I saw suddenly, almost as if from beyond time altogether, that not only was the turnip good, but Read more [...]

I’m up in Brevard, NC for a couple of days visiting friends. The mountain weather is just about perfect, seventy five degrees with a nice breeze. Walking is such a great way to see a small town like Brevard. It’s known as the home of the white squirrel, a rare animal found in only a few places in the US. Allegedly they were brought here when a traveling circus came through town and a pair escaped. The circus was unable to find the two fugitives, and when the circus left town, the squirrels stayed.  Years passed, and the amorous couple began to produce offspring. There is a healthy population here now I hear, but in several visits, I have never actually seen one.  My walking takes me through the campus of Brevard college. It’s Spring and everything is blooming, multi-colored azaleas, daffodils, and dogwoods. Students are out and about, heading to class, lounging in the sun, throwing a frisbee. Everyone is happy, including the birds, who are singing to each other like nobody’s business. But still no white squirrel. Maybe a little too busy for them here. I continue walking down Broad Street and come upon the Veterans Museum of the Carolinas, right next to the historic old brick courthouse. I really have a soft spot for museums and military history so I can’t pass it up.   The museum is run by volunteer veterans, and (let’s call him) Bob, is on duty today. He’s super friendly, and when he sees I’m from Atlanta, tells me he was just there last week for a vet reunion. Shows me on his phone an Italian restaurant I have to try when I get back home. He’s very proud, and rightfully so, of the museum itself. There are different rooms for every theater, World War I, World War II, Korean War, Cold War, Vietnam, and the Gulf War.  I didn’t serve in the military, but lost two great uncles in WWII. The older, my namesake James, was wounded in the Pacific and brought home where he died from his wounds. The younger one, Read more [...]

He’d met the old man when he worked one summer baling hay on a neighbor’s cattle farm. On summer break from high school, it was his first real job, and hard work, out in the field loading the freshly baled hay onto a flatbed trailer, pulled behind a John Deere tractor. Then, when the trailer was full, the hay was stacked up into the barn loft, where it was at least a hundred and twenty degrees. Even showering after work, he could still feel the prickly hay itch on his skin.   The old man pretty much ran the operation, sometimes driving the baler, sometimes the tractor, and he could do any job on the farm that needed doing. He didn’t say much, but when he did the kid paid attention, and so learned to drive a tractor himself, plant fence posts, string barbed wire. Herd cattle. After the hay was cut and put up, they cleared a wood lot together and he learned to use a chainsaw, keep the blade sharp, and split the straight oak logs into fence rails. The beauty of the fence they built along the driveway made all the hard work worthwhile.  Foot and mouth disease got into the herd that August, and every morning three or four more cows had died. The kid had to hook the bodies to a chain and use the tractor to pull them down to a big hole and bury them. This went on for weeks until the vet got the sickness under control. He didn’t eat beef for a good while after that, and the whole experience kind of turned him off of farming in general, and raising cattle in particular. The neighbor had two daughters about his age, and he learned to ride a horse when they invited him out after work one afternoon. It was a big place, the farm, and that summer they rode horses all over the pastures and wooded trails, down to a stream where they swam and jumped off a rope swing hung out over the water. It was some of the best times he had had so far in his life. Being young, the company of women, and after a good ride, unsaddling and brushing the horses down Read more [...]