One small detail that I forgot to mention regarding the trip to Cherokee was our unfortunate experience regarding alcohol.
We had checked into our grotty motel, having driven for the best part of the day around the Smokey Mountains. We were desperate for a shower, a change of clothes and a refreshing cold beer.
Reassembling again in reception, we tried to locate the nearest bar down the gaudy strip that comprised of many odd looking gift shops, also offering delicacies such as ‘boiled peanuts’ and rat’s cheese’. I wasn’t hungry enough for either of these, but I had started to notice that while there was an abundance of tat to buy, there was precious little in the way of taverns or bars. In fact, there weren’t any; not a single, seedy looking tavern with a neon sign of an insanely happy Indian and a pint, nothing. There was a picture of a bear with a gun on a billboard however. I think of all the things you wouldn’t want to bump into, it would have to be a bear with a gun, and a banjo.
Traipsing back to the motel, which had started to make the Bates look quite twee in comparison, we enquired about the possibility of a hotel bar. The girl at the desk met us with a look that flicked from surprise to suspicion to a strange expression that suggested she might be struck by lightning should she divulge what she clearly knew from the moment we checked in.
“I’m sorry sir, Cherokee is a dry county.”
After a second of delay, in which my addled brain tried calculating how much rainfall there had been in Cherokee in the last calendar year, we realised the true horror of what had been said. We were informed by the girl (who wouldn’t have looked out of place in The Crucible) to drive to Bryson City where we would be able to fill our tanks, as it were.
Bryson City, ironical in that it was smaller than most English hamlets, was a ghost-town. I found it quietly interesting that the town was named after my favourite travel writer, in his home country. I had recently been reading his book Walk in the Woods where he embarked upon the Appalachian Trail, he documented the way in which certain areas (including the Smokey Mountains) were reminiscent of Deliverance and Bryson City, whether Bill knew it or not, was not dissimilar. It was a Sunday and most of the shops (most of them selling tat or guns) were all closed. I swore that I could hear banjo-music as I crossed the road, I quickened my step and tried not to look like Jon Voigt.
We’d seen a garage with a large neon sign in the window saying ‘Cold Beer Here’ on our way in. This filled us with joy, the plan was to eat and then go to the garage afterwards, pick up supplies and retire to the motel where we could play cards and get drunk.
Gary, ever the optimist, was on his iphone in front of me, he’d decided to ring the said garage to check its opening hours. He suddenly sank to his knees like one of those string toys when you press the button underneath it. He put one hand to his head while the other held the phone grimly close to his ear and enquired in a feeble voice:
“Is that a county law, by any chance?”
What Gary had discovered was that we weren’t able to buy alcohol from an off-licence anywhere in the county on a Sunday after 6pm. Sure enough, harmonising with the tortured groans of Gaz and I was the town-clock chiming 6.
Dad, meanwhile, had been doing a very good impression of the world’s slowest man, a trick he pulls off quite well. As it was, he was nearly two blocks behind us and hadn’t overheard the conversation. We decided to keep Dad from the horrible truth while we sat in a diner and ordered some ropey looking pasta. Eventually, after considering the predicament, we began to tell him the situation.
“What? What’s everyone not telling me?”
He looked up and down the table, at me awkwardly biting my lip, Mum and Rhiannon hiding behind their menus and Gary and Katrina both taking an abnormal interest in the interior decor.
I told him. He looked up and sat very still for a moment, utterly statuesque.
“So what exactly is it you’re telling me?” came the deathly-quiet question. We repeated to him the predicament we found ourselves in, he looked into the middle-distance with an expression of a man who had just opened the front door to not only find Rolf Harris stood there, but dressed entirely in leather. The Vesuvius reaction was on its way, but first came the confusion, like a Moose that stubbornly refuses to keel over, even though it has an arrow in its head.
The food arrived; Gary, feeling responsible, was consulting his iphone again and was no doubt trying to fast-track order a six-pack from ebay, or something to compensate. Katrina and Mum were twittering in that way that only married women can, Rhiannon was looking glumly at me and I was looking at Dad, who by now had slumped deep into his seat, looking for the entire world like a Moose that had clearly been shot.
We recovered well enough from the prohibition, soon we were off again to civilisation and hitting bars with an enthusiasm that would have appeared unhealthy if you didn’t know the full story.
Stay tuned for the next episode, find out how I nearly got arrested for looking like a drunk in London Euston...peace.
Wednesday 19 August 2009
Thursday 13 August 2009
Musical Interlude
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiVNTddmWF8
Consider this an interlude while I gather my thoughts for the next part of my blog, I know my guitar playing and singing arent going to set the world alight. But I enjoyed myself!
Consider this an interlude while I gather my thoughts for the next part of my blog, I know my guitar playing and singing arent going to set the world alight. But I enjoyed myself!
Charlotte, North Carolina.
The plan was simple, hit the states and enjoy the hospitality of Gary and Katrina. They were, and still are the best hosts I’ve ever experienced. We set off for Charlotte, North Carolina on the 29th July from a rainy English summer and arrived to a sunny and sticky afternoon.
Gary and Katrina were family friends who lived in Colden Common about 8 years ago, Katrina is from Alabama and Gary from Swindon (someone has to be). It had been a long time since I’d seen either of them and it was heartening to see that neither of them had changed; Katrina was as gregarious as ever and Gary was still a big kid. The big difference between now and when I was 12 was that he could drink beer with me, which seemed to set the tone for the rest of the trip. Upon arrival, we were taken out to the local bar, which was about 20 minutes drive away. Gary explained, as he took on Charlotte’s rush-hour traffic, that people in America rarely walk anywhere and that most places are catered so much for drivers but not walkers. It seemed surreal being on a stretch of highway, yellow traffic lights suspended from wires, people driving on the right...little did I know just how strange things were going to become.
We ate out that evening, went back to the house where Rhiannon and Dad were clearly flagging. Mum and I stayed up until 12 midnight, in the interest of beating jetlag, and beating Gary at Wii Sports. I retired to bed a happy man.
We bumbled about for a few days, went to many bars and restaurants and ate and drank in U.S sized portions. It wasn’t so much the size of the main-meals that had you undoing yet another notch in your belt (I ran out of holes), as it was the free sides you got with them. We went to ‘Mert’s Soul Food’ one evening, lots of fried chicken, sticky rice, barbeque ribs and chilli. I honestly felt like asking for a bankers draft to afford to stay out here for the next year at least. The ribs were falling off the bone, extraordinarily tasty.
It was later in the week that we opted to go to Cherokee for an overnight stay. The main attraction there was the Native American reservation and re-enactment site, something I’ve longed to see since I was little. On the museum tour I found myself reading the plaques detailing the infamous ‘Trail of Tears’ in which numerous Cherokee tribe’s people, not having had to deal with foreign diseases before, perished on their slaves journey out west. Causes of death were typically smallpox, exhaustion and, some might say, despondency. Within me it stirred feelings of anger to the injustice this peace-loving tribe endured again and again. It appeared to be so undeserved too, it wasn’t as if the Cherokee were chasing Custer’s scalp; while the Sioux and the Plains Indians were fighting the settlers, the Cherokee would extend hospitality to anyone in need and were rewarded by the greed of a cruel, new age of globalisation. It reminded me of the Cree Prophecy:
‘Only when the last tree has died and the last river has been poisoned and the last fish has been caught we will realise that we cannot eat money.’
The reservation was much more uplifting, the tour leader was dressed in traditional tribal gear which belied his Carolina drawl. What became apparent after a while however was that his trousers stopped just short of his upper thighs. This was compensated for by a loincloth that flapped dangerously when he walked, I found my eyesight involuntarily and morbidly drawn towards it as the tour progressed. The finale of the day was a Native American dance, which naturally had me imagining the swirling feathers and fire that you might see in films such as ‘Dances With Wolves’. If anything, the dances were much more Polynesian in their style than I expected. The men mostly had bald heads save a pony-tail, very much a Maori or South American look and the dance was very economical and not grand or showy . It was certainly interesting, though a few of the participants looked like they’d been roped into it...
Stay tuned in for Part Two....
Gary and Katrina were family friends who lived in Colden Common about 8 years ago, Katrina is from Alabama and Gary from Swindon (someone has to be). It had been a long time since I’d seen either of them and it was heartening to see that neither of them had changed; Katrina was as gregarious as ever and Gary was still a big kid. The big difference between now and when I was 12 was that he could drink beer with me, which seemed to set the tone for the rest of the trip. Upon arrival, we were taken out to the local bar, which was about 20 minutes drive away. Gary explained, as he took on Charlotte’s rush-hour traffic, that people in America rarely walk anywhere and that most places are catered so much for drivers but not walkers. It seemed surreal being on a stretch of highway, yellow traffic lights suspended from wires, people driving on the right...little did I know just how strange things were going to become.
We ate out that evening, went back to the house where Rhiannon and Dad were clearly flagging. Mum and I stayed up until 12 midnight, in the interest of beating jetlag, and beating Gary at Wii Sports. I retired to bed a happy man.
We bumbled about for a few days, went to many bars and restaurants and ate and drank in U.S sized portions. It wasn’t so much the size of the main-meals that had you undoing yet another notch in your belt (I ran out of holes), as it was the free sides you got with them. We went to ‘Mert’s Soul Food’ one evening, lots of fried chicken, sticky rice, barbeque ribs and chilli. I honestly felt like asking for a bankers draft to afford to stay out here for the next year at least. The ribs were falling off the bone, extraordinarily tasty.
It was later in the week that we opted to go to Cherokee for an overnight stay. The main attraction there was the Native American reservation and re-enactment site, something I’ve longed to see since I was little. On the museum tour I found myself reading the plaques detailing the infamous ‘Trail of Tears’ in which numerous Cherokee tribe’s people, not having had to deal with foreign diseases before, perished on their slaves journey out west. Causes of death were typically smallpox, exhaustion and, some might say, despondency. Within me it stirred feelings of anger to the injustice this peace-loving tribe endured again and again. It appeared to be so undeserved too, it wasn’t as if the Cherokee were chasing Custer’s scalp; while the Sioux and the Plains Indians were fighting the settlers, the Cherokee would extend hospitality to anyone in need and were rewarded by the greed of a cruel, new age of globalisation. It reminded me of the Cree Prophecy:
‘Only when the last tree has died and the last river has been poisoned and the last fish has been caught we will realise that we cannot eat money.’
The reservation was much more uplifting, the tour leader was dressed in traditional tribal gear which belied his Carolina drawl. What became apparent after a while however was that his trousers stopped just short of his upper thighs. This was compensated for by a loincloth that flapped dangerously when he walked, I found my eyesight involuntarily and morbidly drawn towards it as the tour progressed. The finale of the day was a Native American dance, which naturally had me imagining the swirling feathers and fire that you might see in films such as ‘Dances With Wolves’. If anything, the dances were much more Polynesian in their style than I expected. The men mostly had bald heads save a pony-tail, very much a Maori or South American look and the dance was very economical and not grand or showy . It was certainly interesting, though a few of the participants looked like they’d been roped into it...
Stay tuned in for Part Two....
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