Ah yes, well, when I arrived I asked how to pronounce Bodø - which, as you say has the last 'o' crossed out. It seems that 'o' is pronounced 'oo' and ø is sort of like 'uh' - so we get Booduh.
A joke in our family was how to cure a cold in Norway. Tie a sock on the end of the bed and start drinking aakavit. Stay in the bed drinking until the sock disappears. When you wake up you will be cured!
the last time I stayed up until midnight on NYE was in 1999 so I could see if Y2K was going to happen. there I sat, hovering over the Windows 98 Date/Time settings so I could watch the clock with actual hands… midnight came, the computer stayed on, and the world didn’t end.
I had a student in one of my Latin classes who brought me a brilliant send-up of all the Y2K hysteria. It was a Y0K list of all the bad things that would supposedly happen when BC suddenly turned to AD. Stuff about chariots breaking down, swords falling to pieces, papyri suddenly shredding, calculators* no longer calculating, etc., etc., etc. It was hilarious!!
*Yes, the Romans had calculators. They were wooden with little grooves or pockets in them that would hold little pebbles. They worked sort of on the order of an abacus.
The Latin word for pebble is "calculus". So when you use your calculator you are counting pebbles and if you studied calculus at any time, you studied pebbles. Interesting, isn't it?
I was "pretty convinced" we would see the end of the world on Y2K.
+ We bought an 8-person trailer--stored it at a friend's 1,000 acre farm, full kitchen,
+ outdoor shower operated through the car radiator
+ scooter,
+ SO MUCH DRY FOOD. +
+ We even took a gun-safety-class put on by the local police ... God forbid that somebody might walk up my driveway to see if I have a spare cookie and I needed to protect ourselves,
+ Then we moved from FL to CA before Y2K struck, just to be ahead of this international disaster.
+ My EX-was friends with Gary North (Gary discovered the Y2K problem), John Mauldin, another Y2K author, other writers-people who knew way-too-much- about Y2K. Everybody knew just enough to make each other very paranoid about the Y2K "End of the World" Apocalyptic Disaster etc etc I knew we were in trouble and in deep confusion when the "Ohio Gas and Electric Company" started calling us for our profound information. I knew we were in big trouble if these huge corporations were calling for our our professional information.
+ Sean, you and I could meet and have some dried scrambled eggs
I’m in MST too and I also watch NYE in NYC. Sometimes I just watch it in Australia and if things don’t blow up there i just call it good and go back to sleep.
Oh hey, it's next year 2 hours sooner in New Zealand! But we don't light up our bridge nearly as pretty as Sydney, so I guess you're picking the right celebration 😉
On January 1 2000 I went to the Naval Observatory website where the official date of the United States of America was reported to be January 1 19100. I should've gotten a screenshot.
A lot of work was done to make sure that nothing really went wrong on y2k.
There were several (many?) places that showed the year as 19100. I made a tiny contribution to Y2K remediation by fixing one of them ahead of time.
Want to know why that happened? If you're a programmer who needs to display the current 4-digit year, and the OS provides you only with "# of years after 1900", you can either add 1900 to that number and display the resulting sum, or you can just print "19" followed by that number. Only one of those continues to work after 1999.
According to a character in a Robert Heinlein novel, the world _did_ end then, and everything since is merely an illusion of the devil. (At least that is my flawed recollection; ChatGPT disagrees.)
I’m a Scot and believe that if you have any Scottish genes, listening to bagpipes aligns the neurons in your brain perfectly. My husband has no Scottish genes. To him, bagpipes sound exactly like “a swarm of bees”.
I wish they sounded like a swarm of bees. Bee swarms are only at 90 decibels. Bagpipe are at 140 decibels -- unless you're in the same zip code, then they are 1,000 decibels.
The ground crew personnel at the airport wear 3 different types of hearing protection: Ear plugs for propeller planes, Bose noise-cancelling headphones for jets, and deep sea diving helmets stuffed with foam for bagpipes.
My primary ethnicity is Scots and I grew up in Nova Scotia. I love bagpipes. My Nova Scotian father would say "Do you know why bagpipers always walk while they're playing? It makes it harder to hit them with rotten vegetables." He really did like bagpipes but to him, joking about bagpipes was the same as joking about a member of your family.
I’m enough Scottish that I love bagpipes. My father is from whom I get the Scottish bloodline, used to call bagpipes ‘asthma bags’ and disparaged my fondness for them.
Where I went to college the music department taught pipers and, well, a novice piper sounds (and looks) like they're squeezing a cat under their arm while biting its tail.
There's a guy, the Unipiper, who rides on a unicycle playing fire-breathing bagpipes in Portland, Ore. I haven't been there for a while but it looks like he is wearing Steampunk clothes now. I seem to remember kilts.
I love Portland but I remember Irish cousins visiting, and one person couldn't get past a guy with a sign around his neck that read: "Free hugs!" He keep pondering, "Why would I want a hug from him?"
Okay, my favorite bagpipe joke, courtesy of my husband: why do people walk while they’re playing the bagpipes? Because they’re trying to get away from the noise!
Coincidence? Tallapoosa, GA is 17 miles from the Okefenokee Swamp, one-time home of Pogo Possum, who has been missing since 1975. This fits exactly with the discovery of “Spencer,” which took place “many years ago.” Also, Bud Jones (a name that anagrams to Jed Bonus) reported that the possum “Wasn’t hurt at all, except that he was dead.” Did anyone even consider that the animal - perhaps tired of the demands of his celebrity life - faked his own death? This is, after all, a possum we’re talking about.
Um, “Home of Rhubarb Jones, back when he was alive.” And maybe an asterisk, followed by “but that’s another whole story.” I’ll collect my fees after the shoe drops.
We were performing "Julius Caesar" and were told NOT to say "Rhubarb Rhubarb" in the crowd scene. The result was that in a momentary pause, one voice was heard yelling "Read the f......ing will!"
Dave, as we begin to resolve never again to make resolutions, I'm reminded of the great baseball Hall of Fame pitcher, Leroy Robert "Satchel" Paige, who played for an astonishing four decades, throwing his last professional pitch at 59, and who was almost as well known for his stories and words of wisdom as his fastball. One aphorism, in particular, stands out as we enter another 365.
"Work like you don’t need money. Love like you’ve never been hurt. Dance like nobody’s watching."
Back in the day, when I went to Times Square for New Year's as a teenager, they didn't have all the hoo-hah that they have now from a production standpoint. What passed as "entertainment" was not getting hit by a flying empty bottle of vodka or being pickpocketed. It's much more "organized now." Which is to say, it's even more boring than it was then. BUT -- a trip home from the ball drop always included a stop at the White Castle since it was the only thing open. We'd call it the "holly tradition" since the hamburgers all had holes in them. Good times.
In grad school, and quite new to living in the US, my apt-mate (medic in the army) and her husband treated me to a movie (my pick, and to her disgust, her husband and I picked 'Alien Nation') and Whitecastle for dinner. It was a drive-through, and when she asked me "how many?" I quite sanely, I thought, replied, "Oh, one". She turned around and asked if I was sure. I think we gazed at each other in mutual surprise. It was my first Whitecastle. You think one of them could've explained the sizing..
After late-night drinking in NYC, we'd stop at White Castle. (This was 8 million years ago.) The burgers were called "sliders," because they slid right down your gullet, and then 20 minutes later, they would slide right out your back side.
In a White Castle at 2 a.m. on New Year's Day, many years ago, my friend read aloud from the White Castle magazine that the chain had served ten million burgers in the previous year. He groaned, and said: "Aww, think of all those poor horses." All of the customers laughed, even the cops.
Dave, in my continuing effort to raise the general intellectual tone around here, I offer "Observation" by Dorothy Parker, perhaps especially appropriate as we look to the new year with unbridled horror.
Observation
If I don’t drive around the park,
I’m pretty sure to make my mark.
If I’m in bed each night by ten,
I may get back my looks again,
If I abstain from fun and such,
I’ll probably amount to much,
But I shall stay the way I am,
Because I do not give a damn.
--- From "Enough Rope" (Boni & Liveright, 1926) by Dorothy Parker
I really need to spend more time on this one rereading. Dave you’ve probably heard this a million times but I need to thank you again for your writing and who you are. I can’t even begin to tell you how you’re saved me all these years. Love and hugs to you and your family!! 💕
But would it be worth re-reading at 6 AM on January 1? Now, THERE'S the test of a Substack post...! Or a test of the caliber of one's New Year's Eve, I guess.
Just as long as you are awake enough to watch Indiana in the Rose Bowl!! Last appearance: 1967. I was in high school. Now I’m elderly, depending on whom you ask.
You bet I'm in bed early, making up for horrible memories when young couples had to go to private parties. You see, in Wisconsin, it is mandatory to have snow for Christmas and ICE for New Years Eve. So, under the coat we wore our little black dress and an old, wool cardigan and we wore galoshes and carried the high heels in a paper bag. Now that you have reminded me of the guy I didn't know who planted a kiss smack on my lips and then said he hadn't expected to get to the party since he was in bed with the flu all week, this year could be a record-setting early bed time.
Thanks for the info on Prairie du Chien, I did not know about the carp. Maybe it is sort of kept quiet around the state.
Ah yes, carrying shoes in a bag, trying to find a place to put them on, then trying to find your galoshes when you tried to go home. Wisconsin, The Glamor State.
The Brasstown NC possum drop was staged at a gnarly old convenience store called Clay's Corner, on old US Highway 64 a few mile3s south of Murphy NC. It's still open for business, but without tumbling possums since 2013.
Ironically, one of the toniest operations in western NC (outside of Asheville) is right around the corner: The John C. Campbell Folk School, where well-heeled women pay large sums to improve their skills at pottery-making, the writing of bad poetry, and clogging.
I got all excited thinking this might be right around the corner from here but naaaah, it's like a 5-1/2 hour drive. Who knew a US highway would be that long?!? I'm vaguely Scottish and vaguely offended.
I'm Norwegian. In Norway, it's dark 20 hours a day on December 31. So we go bed at 6pm and wake up June 20th to celebrate the New Year .
I’m in Bodo right now and heading to Svolvaer to see in the New Year. Could you get someone to turn on the Northern Lights please. It’s dark out
If you look closely, it's actually Bod. The second O is crossed out.
Ah yes, well, when I arrived I asked how to pronounce Bodø - which, as you say has the last 'o' crossed out. It seems that 'o' is pronounced 'oo' and ø is sort of like 'uh' - so we get Booduh.
But I like your explanation better :)
Yes, or Buddha. Enjoy Svolvaer!
Lmao! That’s the way to get through the New Years celebrations - hibernate…!
And I wondered why Norway was always close the the top of the Happiest Countries List.
It’s because of the aakavit!
Served “ice cold.” Given that it’s Norway, that shouldn’t be a problem.
A joke in our family was how to cure a cold in Norway. Tie a sock on the end of the bed and start drinking aakavit. Stay in the bed drinking until the sock disappears. When you wake up you will be cured!
A wise move.
the last time I stayed up until midnight on NYE was in 1999 so I could see if Y2K was going to happen. there I sat, hovering over the Windows 98 Date/Time settings so I could watch the clock with actual hands… midnight came, the computer stayed on, and the world didn’t end.
at least, I don’t -think- it did.
Me too. Y2K met 6-7 (or something like that)
6-7 🤣
I had a student in one of my Latin classes who brought me a brilliant send-up of all the Y2K hysteria. It was a Y0K list of all the bad things that would supposedly happen when BC suddenly turned to AD. Stuff about chariots breaking down, swords falling to pieces, papyri suddenly shredding, calculators* no longer calculating, etc., etc., etc. It was hilarious!!
*Yes, the Romans had calculators. They were wooden with little grooves or pockets in them that would hold little pebbles. They worked sort of on the order of an abacus.
The Latin word for pebble is "calculus". So when you use your calculator you are counting pebbles and if you studied calculus at any time, you studied pebbles. Interesting, isn't it?
amo, amas, amat!
amamus, amatis, amant!
Didn't the new millennium begin 1/1/21?
The clock with actual hands may have been The Distraction. There have been more glitches than not since then, don’t you think?
you may be onto something!
Sean,
I was "pretty convinced" we would see the end of the world on Y2K.
+ We bought an 8-person trailer--stored it at a friend's 1,000 acre farm, full kitchen,
+ outdoor shower operated through the car radiator
+ scooter,
+ SO MUCH DRY FOOD. +
+ We even took a gun-safety-class put on by the local police ... God forbid that somebody might walk up my driveway to see if I have a spare cookie and I needed to protect ourselves,
+ Then we moved from FL to CA before Y2K struck, just to be ahead of this international disaster.
+ My EX-was friends with Gary North (Gary discovered the Y2K problem), John Mauldin, another Y2K author, other writers-people who knew way-too-much- about Y2K. Everybody knew just enough to make each other very paranoid about the Y2K "End of the World" Apocalyptic Disaster etc etc I knew we were in trouble and in deep confusion when the "Ohio Gas and Electric Company" started calling us for our profound information. I knew we were in big trouble if these huge corporations were calling for our our professional information.
+ Sean, you and I could meet and have some dried scrambled eggs
Now, THIS is a memoir that needs to be written!
seconded!
I was sitting in a police station (my job) in MST waiting for it to be midnight in the East so I could breathing easy.
I’m in MST too and I also watch NYE in NYC. Sometimes I just watch it in Australia and if things don’t blow up there i just call it good and go back to sleep.
Oh hey, it's next year 2 hours sooner in New Zealand! But we don't light up our bridge nearly as pretty as Sydney, so I guess you're picking the right celebration 😉
On January 1 2000 I went to the Naval Observatory website where the official date of the United States of America was reported to be January 1 19100. I should've gotten a screenshot.
A lot of work was done to make sure that nothing really went wrong on y2k.
Now we're all working on the Year 2038 Problem.
There were several (many?) places that showed the year as 19100. I made a tiny contribution to Y2K remediation by fixing one of them ahead of time.
Want to know why that happened? If you're a programmer who needs to display the current 4-digit year, and the OS provides you only with "# of years after 1900", you can either add 1900 to that number and display the resulting sum, or you can just print "19" followed by that number. Only one of those continues to work after 1999.
Well that’s debatable.
I remember that Dave's column was especially funny that year
O bet it was. Anybody have a link to that? I’m feeling nostalgic.
What else did we buy for “the end of the world?”
-we bought a pot-bellied stove with a special fireplace insert
-batteries of all sizes
-we bought a radio that could run on hand-driven power …
YES, we bought three generators
We purchased rotating-hand-driven cell phones.
Basically our basement looked like a MILITARY SCENE out of MASH.
-tools that would clean water
-we knew how to have water drip off a TARP into a “holding tank”
NOW … did we know how to use these things?
-NOT ON YOUR LIFE!
-for instance I had never used the shower that ran on the car radiator.
When we figured out Y2K was not going to be the next Armageddon, we donated everything to Centers for the Homeless.”
I look forward to meeting all of you at the next MEGA-SUPER-EVENT
According to a character in a Robert Heinlein novel, the world _did_ end then, and everything since is merely an illusion of the devil. (At least that is my flawed recollection; ChatGPT disagrees.)
“Festering cesspit of rage” is a great name for a band….a band of bagpipes.
I’m a Scot and believe that if you have any Scottish genes, listening to bagpipes aligns the neurons in your brain perfectly. My husband has no Scottish genes. To him, bagpipes sound exactly like “a swarm of bees”.
I wish they sounded like a swarm of bees. Bee swarms are only at 90 decibels. Bagpipe are at 140 decibels -- unless you're in the same zip code, then they are 1,000 decibels.
The Scots play bagpipes. The airport calls to complain.
Ha ha!
The ground crew personnel at the airport wear 3 different types of hearing protection: Ear plugs for propeller planes, Bose noise-cancelling headphones for jets, and deep sea diving helmets stuffed with foam for bagpipes.
Who told you our secret?
My primary ethnicity is Scots and I grew up in Nova Scotia. I love bagpipes. My Nova Scotian father would say "Do you know why bagpipers always walk while they're playing? It makes it harder to hit them with rotten vegetables." He really did like bagpipes but to him, joking about bagpipes was the same as joking about a member of your family.
Tell him the bees are synchronized. Or syncopated. Whichever works to get him to listen carefully!
I’m enough Scottish that I love bagpipes. My father is from whom I get the Scottish bloodline, used to call bagpipes ‘asthma bags’ and disparaged my fondness for them.
I am Scottish, and I am offended. 😉
Where I went to college the music department taught pipers and, well, a novice piper sounds (and looks) like they're squeezing a cat under their arm while biting its tail.
I'm not Scottish and I'm offended. Is that possible? 🤔
My neighbor knocked on my door at 3 am! Luckily, I was already up playing the bagpipes.
There's a guy, the Unipiper, who rides on a unicycle playing fire-breathing bagpipes in Portland, Ore. I haven't been there for a while but it looks like he is wearing Steampunk clothes now. I seem to remember kilts.
https://www.unipiper.com/about
I love Portland but I remember Irish cousins visiting, and one person couldn't get past a guy with a sign around his neck that read: "Free hugs!" He keep pondering, "Why would I want a hug from him?"
I was picturing him nude until you mentioned the clothes. I'm not sure why. Seemed more Portland, somehow.
Okay, my favorite bagpipe joke, courtesy of my husband: why do people walk while they’re playing the bagpipes? Because they’re trying to get away from the noise!
I hereby volunteer to sing in the great new band “Festering Cesspools of Carp”.
I heard an interview on “wait wait don’t tell me”, Anne the Piper, maybe Amy, and Metallica featured her in a song!
Coincidence? Tallapoosa, GA is 17 miles from the Okefenokee Swamp, one-time home of Pogo Possum, who has been missing since 1975. This fits exactly with the discovery of “Spencer,” which took place “many years ago.” Also, Bud Jones (a name that anagrams to Jed Bonus) reported that the possum “Wasn’t hurt at all, except that he was dead.” Did anyone even consider that the animal - perhaps tired of the demands of his celebrity life - faked his own death? This is, after all, a possum we’re talking about.
Tallapoosa was the home of Rhubarb Jones, noted Georgia radio personality and DJ. He ruled the metro Atlanta airways for over two decades.
Believe it or not, I tried to figure out a way to work Rhubarb Jones into this Substack. So I'm glad you did.
Um, “Home of Rhubarb Jones, back when he was alive.” And maybe an asterisk, followed by “but that’s another whole story.” I’ll collect my fees after the shoe drops.
In high school drama class, I was taught that, during a crowd scene, I should walk around saying, "Hubbub, hubbub. Rhubarb, rhubarb."
We were performing "Julius Caesar" and were told NOT to say "Rhubarb Rhubarb" in the crowd scene. The result was that in a momentary pause, one voice was heard yelling "Read the f......ing will!"
Hubbub-hubbub-rhubarb-rhubarb does work well for a crowd murmur - provided the cast doesn’t say it in unison.
I absolutely agree! But the director wanted everyone to say "whatever crossed our minds." The result was memorable.
The sciency nature of your comment is super impressive. I have completely bought into this entire premise. Thank you. 😜
Thanks. I was actually going for conspiracy-theoristy, but I'll take sciency.
I’m thinking of lowering a burning dumpster this year. Who’s with me? Please bring a crane.
I’m with you! The sight (and smell, I hope) of a burning dumpster would make me very happy. I’m mostly French, so this could explain the mood lift.
Dave, as we begin to resolve never again to make resolutions, I'm reminded of the great baseball Hall of Fame pitcher, Leroy Robert "Satchel" Paige, who played for an astonishing four decades, throwing his last professional pitch at 59, and who was almost as well known for his stories and words of wisdom as his fastball. One aphorism, in particular, stands out as we enter another 365.
"Work like you don’t need money. Love like you’ve never been hurt. Dance like nobody’s watching."
Back in the day, when I went to Times Square for New Year's as a teenager, they didn't have all the hoo-hah that they have now from a production standpoint. What passed as "entertainment" was not getting hit by a flying empty bottle of vodka or being pickpocketed. It's much more "organized now." Which is to say, it's even more boring than it was then. BUT -- a trip home from the ball drop always included a stop at the White Castle since it was the only thing open. We'd call it the "holly tradition" since the hamburgers all had holes in them. Good times.
Oh, and you could by a dozen of them for about two bucks. Which makes you wonder what they're made out of.
White Castle, in the 1980s, used to advertise a bag of burgers for a couple bucks.
In grad school, and quite new to living in the US, my apt-mate (medic in the army) and her husband treated me to a movie (my pick, and to her disgust, her husband and I picked 'Alien Nation') and Whitecastle for dinner. It was a drive-through, and when she asked me "how many?" I quite sanely, I thought, replied, "Oh, one". She turned around and asked if I was sure. I think we gazed at each other in mutual surprise. It was my first Whitecastle. You think one of them could've explained the sizing..
"Silver dollar burgers"!
After late-night drinking in NYC, we'd stop at White Castle. (This was 8 million years ago.) The burgers were called "sliders," because they slid right down your gullet, and then 20 minutes later, they would slide right out your back side.
In a White Castle at 2 a.m. on New Year's Day, many years ago, my friend read aloud from the White Castle magazine that the chain had served ten million burgers in the previous year. He groaned, and said: "Aww, think of all those poor horses." All of the customers laughed, even the cops.
“Gutbombs.”
And 20 minutes later, they were "Buttbombs"!
Best after 9 p.m. snack ever!
Dave, in my continuing effort to raise the general intellectual tone around here, I offer "Observation" by Dorothy Parker, perhaps especially appropriate as we look to the new year with unbridled horror.
Observation
If I don’t drive around the park,
I’m pretty sure to make my mark.
If I’m in bed each night by ten,
I may get back my looks again,
If I abstain from fun and such,
I’ll probably amount to much,
But I shall stay the way I am,
Because I do not give a damn.
--- From "Enough Rope" (Boni & Liveright, 1926) by Dorothy Parker
We don’t read Dave’s Substack to raise our intellectual tone. Intellect is one of the things we drop!
"Intellectual Tones" would be a good name for a rock band. (Or string quartet.)
I think it sounds more like a jazz trio…
Along with the possums and carp.
This is fabulous! Okay, I hereby volunteer to sing in a band called “Dorothy Parker and the Carp Kissers”.
🫰🏽🫰🏽🫰🏽(snap, snap, snap)
I really need to spend more time on this one rereading. Dave you’ve probably heard this a million times but I need to thank you again for your writing and who you are. I can’t even begin to tell you how you’re saved me all these years. Love and hugs to you and your family!! 💕
Many of us feel the same way. I certainly do.
The word that comes to mind for me when reading Dave’s writing is “giddy.”
This was definitely worth getting up at 6 AM for. Thanks, Dave. I’m now going back to bed.
Har!
But would it be worth re-reading at 6 AM on January 1? Now, THERE'S the test of a Substack post...! Or a test of the caliber of one's New Year's Eve, I guess.
Just as long as you are awake enough to watch Indiana in the Rose Bowl!! Last appearance: 1967. I was in high school. Now I’m elderly, depending on whom you ask.
I celebrate New Year's Day at midnight Greenwich Mean Time, which is 8:00 where I live. Night, y'all.
Prairie du Chien City motto: Carp Diem
Fish of the Day!
I’m very confused by PdC’s carp fixation, as ‘chien ’ is French for dog. Together it references prairie dogs, which also have nothing to do with carp.
Or Wisconsin...
PETA (or anybody) wouldn't stand for frozen dogs!
This really ought to have more likes!
To clarify…City motto:Carpe Diem ought to have more likes.
You bet I'm in bed early, making up for horrible memories when young couples had to go to private parties. You see, in Wisconsin, it is mandatory to have snow for Christmas and ICE for New Years Eve. So, under the coat we wore our little black dress and an old, wool cardigan and we wore galoshes and carried the high heels in a paper bag. Now that you have reminded me of the guy I didn't know who planted a kiss smack on my lips and then said he hadn't expected to get to the party since he was in bed with the flu all week, this year could be a record-setting early bed time.
Thanks for the info on Prairie du Chien, I did not know about the carp. Maybe it is sort of kept quiet around the state.
Ah yes, carrying shoes in a bag, trying to find a place to put them on, then trying to find your galoshes when you tried to go home. Wisconsin, The Glamor State.
When I lived in Minneapolis, we’d sometimes put on the hot dress at home and attend the party with hot dress plus Horrifying Moon Boots.
Also, NW Indiana. Carried my shoes to school every day in winter.
My goodness, Julie, what memories. Again, my brain autocompleted ahead of my eyes and saw, “I did not know about the crap.”
Haha!
I never heard about the Prairie du Chien carp either. But everyone knows about the cow pie bingo and cow chip throw they play in the summer.
We had cow pie tosses in Minnesota! The goal was to impress the cows, who were the judges.
☺️
Hey Dave -- think Lucky can bring back Dick Clark? There are folks, many at ABC, who think he's still alive anyway.
It’s true! He hangs out with Elvis in the Green Room at Universal Studios.
The Brasstown NC possum drop was staged at a gnarly old convenience store called Clay's Corner, on old US Highway 64 a few mile3s south of Murphy NC. It's still open for business, but without tumbling possums since 2013.
Ironically, one of the toniest operations in western NC (outside of Asheville) is right around the corner: The John C. Campbell Folk School, where well-heeled women pay large sums to improve their skills at pottery-making, the writing of bad poetry, and clogging.
I got all excited thinking this might be right around the corner from here but naaaah, it's like a 5-1/2 hour drive. Who knew a US highway would be that long?!? I'm vaguely Scottish and vaguely offended.
Clogging precisely what I must ask....
我穿着尿布, 被冒犯了
"I am wearing a diaper, and I am offended".
Per Google Translate, at least.