Nonnie Travels, Part 2

Nonnie Travels, Part 2

When I signed up for the Road Scholar program, I did so because I needed to leave the house. I have a dicey heart and Myasthenia gravis and neither of my bugaboos waltz with the humid heat of the Florida panhandle in summer. I decided to go to the mountains in North Carolina in October. Book talk, Appalachian music and humor were on the schedule. Deciduous trees. Cool weather. Not a trip to Paris, maybe, but what with everything, maybe just right.

Indeed. My room at the Inn overlooked a small lake and a  mountain. The leaves came through and God, they were beautiful.
No phone. No TV. Great bathtub. Mornings we had Annie Hall (I know) and Nancy Lewis leading us from writer to writer-many thanks to both of you. Evenings we had Appalachian storytellers, musicians, each others' laughter. I rested most afternoons or took gentle walks around the lake. Oh, and I had to replace my cell phone. I'd lost the charger somewhere on the way up, and there weren't any chargers being made that fit my old phone, at least not in Black Mountain, and I ended up having to buy a whole new deal with a contract and…still, a couple of hours out of six days isn't bad, right?

I was surrounded by kindness. Struck by gentility. No phonies. If there were any hidden agendas, I didn't find them. I relaxed with this group. Mine was one cane among many. We were in our sixties, seventies, and well into our eighties, and we enlivened  each other. I got out of the house, got into the mountains, and got to know interesting people who've seen around the corner, who get the joke in the hapless pomposity of "Do you know who I used to be?" I learned to say Appalachia,"apple at ch'a," and that road trips like this are good for me. My next one (poets) is in the works.

Nonnie Travels, Part 1

Before leaving for my 10 day trip to North Carolina for a Road Scholar program, "Southern Writers and Banned Books":

I almost cancelled. (too much chest pain-too tired)

On the way to North Carolina from the Florida panhandle:

"Is this Bonifay?"
"Yes ma'am," the cashier said in a sad, sad voice.

Mamma horse and her colt running flat-out across a pasture,
cows, goats, peanuts, cotton, pecans, sod, brown dirt, red dirt, dirt for sale

Old mansions, (the new ones are around Atlanta I guess, but I didn't go there) gun-shot shacks, tidy small towns with town squares or circles and big churches with long names, railroad tracks with right and wrong sides, the Tricia Yearwood Parkway

yard sales everywhere (I mean, everywhere!)

"Where's everyone going?" I asked.
"The Fair!!!" she said, and handed me my change for a big-gulp  coffee.(Everyone in the Perry, GA. traffic snarl knew but me, and clearly I shoulda.)

front yard sign: "Jesus"

The Windsor Hotel in Americus, GA. Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter go there for dinner sometimes. William Jennings Bryan,  Al Capone, Robert Bly, and Stephen Colbert stayed there. Not bad for a small town hotel.

from a  balconey at the Windsor Hotel

Dining Room, Windsor Hotel

Lost in a mall-crazy loop around Athens, GA.  Lost in one-way streets in downtown Athens, GA.  (It's all true-what they say about the way Southerners give directions.)

Missing my brother Drago, who was home alone at night and didn't like it. Sam and Blossom, our cat and dog, were with him, of course. Excellent companions, the best, but they don't sit at the table with you or watch Chris Matthews.

Springhill Suites are decorated with lots of lime green. Dunno. Springy?

Mountains! (Those others weren't mountains. They were hills. These are mountains)

Montreat, N.C.

Assembly Inn, Montreat, N.C.

And then:

Finding Black Mountain, N.C., (home of Black Mountain College from 1933 to 1957-now there's a story) without a hitch, hardly, unloading my stuff, steering the fucking cart (sorry, but there are times it's the best word) loaded with my stuff to my room at the Assembly Inn at Montreat Conference Center.  Settling in. Dinner with people I liked right away. Feeling fine…and proud of myself.

(to be continued)