In Waynesville we have a better class of homeless

     Living in Waynesville has some much envied advantages; the sense of community, charity and fellowship, not to mention a simpler lifestyle, reduced incidences of crime and the literal and figurative elbow room.  Don’t get me wrong, we have our share of druggies, winos, sex offenders and petty thieves.  After all this is the town where they arrested three men for operating a sadomasochistic castration dungeon, where a Baptist minister evicted nine congregants for not supporting President Bush, and of course, the animal control officer who felt compelled to shotgun Tom Gobbles, the town turkey, in front of a restaurant packed with patrons.  It’s just that most of our horrendous news events wouldn't even make the back pages of some big city newspapers.

     It is easy to get complacent here where they regularly close off Main Street for community street dances, where dining out is a social event to meet and greet your friends and neighbors, and where the serine beauty of the Smoky Mountains almost obscures of the dirty underbelly of human nature.  That’s why it is refreshing when someone scratches the surface and lifts up evidence of the omnipresent societal slough for all to see.

     A few weeks ago I shared a story on the social sites published by The Smoky Mountain News.  It was a compassionate, even inspiring story of one of this town’s street dwellers and his dog.  But the echoes of the story (in my head) are not the unfortunate circumstances that led to his homelessness, not about the help he receives from Meridian Behavior Health Services, or his own charity that he practices with the minimal Social Security income he receives, what echoes is the passage, “waiting for a cup of coffee at City Bakery in Waynesville, the 65-year-old stands patiently alongside tourists, retirees and locals. His clothes, shoes and beard are well kempt. He holds his head up high and there’s a smile on his face. These don’t seem to be your typical characteristics of someone homeless.” 

     It is almost like the writer was attempting to excuse the presence of the misfortunate in our picturesque Norman Rockwell setting.  Are we to assume that we have a better class of homeless?

From the Burr Studio & Gallery 136 North Main Street, Waynesville, NC 28786 

     This blog post was inspired by a recent trip to Bi-Lo for a cucumber, a gallon of distilled water and a six-pack of beer (aren't Express Lines great fodder for the imagination).  I elected to use one of the Self-Pay kiosks rather than wait in line while people tried to guess the correlation of my sundry items.  I was looking up the produce code for cucumbers when the animated voice of the kiosk to my left politely asked, “Do you have anything under your cart?  Do you have any coupons?”  The seemingly benign lady who had just finished her purchase started yelling, “No.  No.  No!  And I don’t want you to talk to me!”

     I wasn't sure if it was a joke meant to amuse her fellow shoppers or a minor psychological detachment, but I knew I had to bookmark the event to use as a muse.  Even in Waynesville…

They shot the Waynesville town turkey!

     In my post a few days ago I made reference to the shooting of the Waynesville town turkey.  I received enough inquiries to dig out the story from the archives and post it.

     It should be noted that long before I started the blog, these musings of mine were used as a cover letter for the twice monthly invoicing of my regular clients.  It was at their encouragement that I began the blog. 

     This was sent on November 22, 2011, approximately one month after the execution of Tom.

Thanksgiving 2011

     It's time to once again to send out the invoices and I was considering writing a sappy heart-felt letter of gratitude for your business and to remind everyone to count their blessings every day and not just on the third Thursday of November, but instead I decided to tell one of my (hopefully) witty (but true) stories.

     I was lamenting with a friend this morning (you know who you are), about a great tragedy the recently befell my little mountain town.  A year or so ago, a rancorous tom turkey took up residence on the east side of our little burb.  He made the parking lot of the Apple Crate restaurant his headquarters, but was not adverse to wandering the nearby neighborhoods or obstinately standing in the middle of the road to stop traffic and peck at the tires of the (mostly) amused drivers.

     No local ever ventured over to that side of town without keeping a close eye out for Tom Gobbles and watching for his ever escalating antics.  It was refreshing to see an icon of Americana, a true soul of wildlife, decide that we, as a species, were not so bad that he couldn't coexist in the same habitat. 

     And then a couple of months ago, the county animal control officers decided that Old Tom was getting too tame and unafraid of humans.  It was stated in the paper that wildlife in town was dangerous and that the avian mascot of Waynesville was becoming a nuisance.  He had to go.  Our government henchmen tried unsuccessfully for several weeks to trap our beloved bird and relocate him to what they thought would be a better home.  These inane attempts were met with the ridicule and animus of the local populace and the disdain of the elusive bearded one himself. 

     Finally in frustration, our duly appointed officers cornered poor Tom in the yard of his favorite restaurant.  One of the county’s agents, our lone female warden, embarrassed by the numerous ineffective attempts to humanely deal with this overly exaggerated municipal menace, reached into her official county pickup and extracted a shotgun from it security rack.  In front of a restaurant full of patrons and a family with small children exiting their minivan, she aimed carefully and shot Old Tom dead.  (There's more news and accounts on Tom’s FaceBook page -- http://www.facebook.com/pages/Tom-Gobbles/201424043209757 )

     Now I blame our country’s famous founding father, Benjamin Franklin for this senseless assassination.  He, of course, wanted the wild turkey to be our national bird and the symbol our great nation.  If he would have spent less time flying kites and more time addressing the Continental Congress, he might have succeeded, and I'm sure our town turkey would have been protected from the aggression of our runaway government in action.

     Now, if the US icon was a turkey instead of the bald eagle, I'm not so sure we'd eat quite so many fowl dinners, and frankly, the idea of roast eagle just doesn’t sound appetizing.  It might also have led to a tradition of feasting on turkey, cornbread stuffing, and mashed potatoes as a Fourth of July celebration.  But then again, the tryptophan and over-stuffed belt-lines may have put a serious damper on the late evening fireworks.

     One last observation:  Maybe, just maybe, good ole Ben has posthumously won out in his attempt to promote a different US symbol.  I don't know about you, but whenever our Washington DC politicians start to talk, all I can think of is a bunch of turkeys.

     Gobble-gobble.  Happy Thanksgiving.