Month: September 2024

Home Grown

Cut the Kiwi

The real reason Pan Am reached its final destination

By Cynthia Adams

As Pan Am approached its final destination in December 1991, it offered heavily discounted airfares, beginning that summer.

Monitoring deals, I noticed a $300 Pan Am offer from New York to Nice. At the height of travel season!

My elegant friend, Dixie, who loved travel, was immediately interested. We grabbed tickets and spent weeks excitedly planning. We’d enjoy the South of France, proceeding to Italy, where her friends were renting a place. Then I’d return solo from Genoa via Nice.

Consulting Frommer’s, my go-to guide, I circled budget hotels, pensiones and cafés.

Better-heeled travel friends offered advice. “Always request the airline’s vegetarian meal,” said Tom, who had studied at the Sorbonne. “It’s fresher, better.” Noted, I phoned the airline requesting special meals for both of us.

Meanwhile, Dixie was packing a rolling duffel dubbed “the beached whale.” She was still stuffing the Whale when we picked her up for departure. It was aptly named (no weight limits then), especially as she dressed to kill versus as a whale harpooner.

She was decked out in crisp linen and a hat for departure. I wore something comfortable.

We were in coach and I had the middle seat, but who cared?

The Riviera awaited! Once airborne, Dixie produced a small bottle of wine from her capacious hand luggage. “To celebrate!”

We surreptitiously toasted.

Aisle Seat shot us a look that said, “Couldn’t you wait?” — which we ignored. I produced Mrs. Field’s cookies purchased at the airport, which she refused. “I’m saving myself for our special meal,” she murmured.

Soon we heard our names called; the special meals! The hostess brought ours, ignoring the contraband wine. Aisle Seat stared as we excitedly opened them to find: A congealed lump of rice, black beans . . . and a whole kiwi, rolling manically around.

Aisle Seat gawped at our trays before smiling at his: beef tips on rice with steamed veggies, roll and cake.

Leaning over, Aisle Seat whispered, “Do you mind my asking what is wrong with you that you have to eat that?”

We wept with laughter. Giving up on the inedible, unseasoned food I vigorously attempted cutting the kiwi with my plastic knife. It escaped each attempt. “I’m hungry enough to just gnaw it,” I confessed.

More misadventure lay ahead.

Once in France, the Beached Whale proved challenging for coming travels, especially using trains along the Côte d’Azur. It was beastly navigating hilly destinations. Reaching our inn, I would arrive panting; me in jeans, Dixie in beautifully rumpled linen.

Controlling the Whale’s wonky wheels and heft left me perpetually famished. We found reasonable fare and delicious jug wine. That is, apart from my one order for fruits de mer, which in my terrible French, arrived raw.

Still, more tears of laughter.

Dixie, a former model, wafted along with aristocratic grace.

Men trailed in her wake.

Once in Genoa, noisily chattering women encircled and jostled Dixie as she stood perfectly quiet. A few blocks later she discovered she was robbed. She quoted Tennessee Williams’ last line in Streetcar: “I’ve always depended upon the kindness of strangers.”

Her wallet, relieved of cash, was kindly returned to the train station.

But, at her friend’s rental, I broke the Italian washing machine. A Candy washing machine. That required negotiations with the Candy Man for repairs. And an emptying of my cash.

Yet it was my solo return to Nice where the greatest travails awaited. I was pulled out of the boarding line by officials demanding a full body search. “But I’m an American citizen!” I protested. “I have rights!”

“Not here in France,” they replied, strangers to Tennessee’s dictum, wheeling a contraption like a portable shower for privacy as they proceeded with the search. They studied my luggage, sternly questioning hair dryer repairs during my travels. (As if any American, ever, repairs a hair dryer.)

“Nope. Only a Candy washing machine,” I answered.

Upon boarding, all eyes were upon the woman detainee who made the flight late. I kept my eyes forward, flush with embarrassment.

Soon after departure came a flurry of announcements. Lunch would soon be served.

“Special meal for Ms. Adams!” chirped a Frenchwoman.

I kept my face averted, studying the disappearing coastline.

When the hostess approached my seat bearing what was probably another congealed mass of starch, I feigned ignorance of any such request. “I’ve no dietary restrictions,” I replied stonily. “Perhaps there was a mistake.”

The hostess looked knowingly. Was that a wink?

“Perhaps so,” she said, mercifully retreating, holding the damnable meal aloft.

When the headline announcing the final Pan Am flight ran later that year, it was the end of a once grand airline. I folded the paper. “It was the gawdawful vegetarian meals,” I muttered.

If only I had told them before it was too late.

Tea Leaf Astrologer

TEA LEAF ASTROLOGER

Virgo

(August 23 – September 22)

We appreciate your pragmatism. We really do. That said, it’s time to occupy the rooms in your Fifth House of Pleasure. (Note: Reorganizing the Tupperware doesn’t count.) What if there was no one to impress, no one to “fix,” nothing to accomplish? Try not trying so hard for five seconds and experience what can only be described as actual, factual joy. The Tupperware will be the icing on the cake.

Tea leaf “fortunes” for the rest of you:

Libra (September 23 – October 22)

Try clicking refresh.

Scorpio (October 23 – November 21)

Eat your greens.

Sagittarius (November 22 – December 21)

The aftertaste will be complex.

Capricorn (December 22 – January 19)

Embrace the imperfection.

Aquarius (January 20 – February 18)

There’s no going back.

Pisces (February 19 – March 20)

Conjure your own plot twist.

Aries (March 21 – April 19)

A full-bodied month with a buttery finish.

Taurus (April 20 – May 20)

Hint: The underdog wins.

Gemini (May 21 – June 20)

No need to spill all your secrets.

Cancer (June 21 – July 22)

One word: remediation.

Leo (July 23 – August 22)

Bring some cash. PS

Zora Stellanova has been divining with tea leaves since Game of Thrones’ Starbucks cup mishap of 2019. While she’s not exactly a medium, she’s far from average. She lives in the N.C. foothills with her Sphynx cat, Lyla.

2024 Department Tea Leaf Astrologer

Poem

POEM

September 2024

Static Apnea

Toes taste water
before it swallows
our bodies.

In a waterfall embrace—
bones brush against
mossy boulders.

Our skin succumbs
to unknown atoms
when the wild decides
where we fall in.

The flow that washed away our sins
is saving someone else by now.

Miles away—
neck deep
in a faith pool,

we hold our breath
to float above
rock bottom.

— Clint Bowman

Clint Bowman’s debut full-length collection of poetry, If Lost, will be published September 5 by Loblolly Press.

2024 Feature Poem

Omnivorous Reader

OMNIVOROUS READER

A Sense of Time and Place

Bland Simpson’s “memoir” sees us anew

By Stephen E. Smith

Writers have twitches and tics of style and substance that identify them as distinctly as their DNA — and writers of exceptional talent are possessed by obsession, a focus on subject matter that elevates their work to a purity that establishes a commonality with their audience. North Carolina’s Thomas Wolfe was such a writer. So is Bland Simpson.

Simpson has earned a reputation as the chronicler of the North Carolina coast and sound country. His books include North Carolina: Land of Water, Land of Sky, The Great Dismal, and Into Sound Country, books that demonstrate his love of the state and the region where he was raised. He has appeared in numerous PBS (WUNC) documentaries, and his familiar voice graces the soundtrack to travelogues exploring the coastal region. In short, he’s the go-to guy when it comes to the history and evolution of coastal North Carolina. For many years, he’s been the Kenan Distinguished Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

In his latest book, Clover Garden: A Carolinian’s Piedmont Memoir, Simpson remains in familiar territory — he’s writing about the state — but he’s moved his focus west to an area outside Chapel Hill where he’s lived for the last 50 years.

Where is Clover Garden?

Head west out of Carrboro until you hit N.C. 54. Drive northwest into gentle farmland until you pass the old White Oak School. If there’s a sign for Swepsonville, you’ve gone too far. You can try that, but you won’t happen upon the place name that serves as the title of Simpson’s memoir. According to Simpson, Clover Garden is closer to Carrboro than Graham. He describes it as “a small, four-square-mile country community to the old Porter Tract of the low Old Fields, lying beside the Haw River just a few miles west of Chapel Hill and Carrboro. . . .” But in truth,readers will suspect that Clover Garden is anywhere in North Carolina’s vast rolling Piedmont, any plot of land inhabited by neighbors who live harmoniously in tight-knit communities.

“Memoir” in the title is used in the loosest sense. There’s maybe a thread of chronology at work, but Simpson takes an impressionistic approach to his writing, à la Manet (not Monet). Readers who remember their art history will be reminded of the details in Music in the Tuileries and The Café-Concert, images in which all the specifics matter to the whole.

Clover Garden is divided into 45 segments — short narratives, random observations, anecdotes, even gossip — that, when taken together, comprise the “memoir” and give the readers a sense of a particular time and place. These independent segments are skillfully illustrated and enhanced with photographs by Ann Cary Simpson, whose keen eye for specific and illuminating images has enhanced Clover Garden and her husband’s previous books.

If the impressionistic comparison seems a trifle pretentious, the narratives Simpson shares are not. He writes of pool halls, pig pickings, snowstorms, country stores, great horned owls, folklore, boatwrighting, cafes and bars, stars, and riderless horses, all the bits and pieces, practical and impractical, that comprise our daily lives. And if you’ve lived in the Piedmont, there’s a good chance you’ll know a few characters who contribute color to the storytelling. If you don’t recognize any of the characters, you know them well enough at the conclusion of the memoir, or you’ll recognize their counterpart in your circle of friends and acquaintances.

Simpson’s descriptions embody an easy blending of history with a touch of nostalgia as in this sepia-tinged recollection of old friends and poolhalls (one of which was frequented by this reviewer): “In time, Jake Mills showed me his two favorite pool halls, Happy’s on Cotanche Street in Greenville and Wilbur’s on Webb Avenue in Burlington. After school in the 1950s, he and Steve Coley used to play quarter games with the textile mill hands coming off first shift and drifting into Wilbur’s straight from work. The cigarette haze hung low below the green shades, and the cry of ‘Rack!’ was in the air, and the balls clicked and clacked, and, like many a youth before them, Jake and Steve picked up pin money in this Alamance County eight-ball haven.” Even Neville’s, a long established Moore County watering hole, receives a passing mention in Simpson’s narrative explorations.

Above all else, Simpson is a master prose stylist, a poet at heart. His sentences are graceful and well-tuned — thoroughly worked on to get that “worked on” feeling out — and laced with continual surprises to save them from predictability. Simpson is always a pleasure to read, and he can transport the reader to familiar ground as if it’s being seen anew. “. . . alongside dairy cows, beeves and horses in pastures meeting deep forests of white oaks and red oaks and pines, copses of them around country churches, and straight up tulip poplars and high-crown hickories, American beech and always sweet gum, muscadine vines everywhere, willows close to the waterlines of ponds where big blue heron stalk and hunt, ponds full of bass and bream, shellcrackers and pumpkinseed and catfish prowling the bottom . . . .”

Thomas Wolfe would approve.

2024 Department Omnivorous Reader

Wandering Billy

WANDERING BILLY

Down to a Fine Art

How Sam Fribush, Calvin Napper and Charlie Hunter came together to create new grooves with familiar sounds

By Billy Ingram

“And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.” — Friedrich Nietzsche

I was covering a shift in a comic book store one sunny Saturday when musician-songwriter Sam Fribush strolled over from his nearby home to discuss the latest steps he’s taken on his remarkable mellifluous journey. He, together with Grammy-winners guitarist-bassist Charley Hunter and drummer Calvin Napper, formed the Sam Fribush Organ Trio to create an album released in March of this year. People Please is a swingingly soulful suture of melodies reminiscent of a time, many decades ago, when rhythmic instrumental riffs ruled the Billboard Hot 100.

Raised in Sunset Hills, Fribush reflects on his musical undertones. “My parents are both self-taught, old-time folk musicians, so I grew up with music in the house. Folk Appalachian music is maybe the first line in my DNA.” While attending Weaver Academy from 2009 to 2013, Fribush began seriously focusing on piano under the instruction of Mark Freundt. “They had a block schedule, so I just sat at the keyboard for an hour-and-a-half every day and practiced. That was a big part of getting my technical facility together.”

From there, he studied music as an undergrad at the prestigious New England Conservatory in Boston, simultaneously picking up local gigs. “That’s when I started playing the Hammond organ, in a Black Baptist church in the south part of Massachusetts,” Fribush says. “A really tough learning environment, got my ass kicked in all the best ways.”

A move to New Orleans led to the musician pounding keys in dimly lit clubs on Bourbon and Frenchmen Streets. “The school of hard knocks,” is how Fribush describes that experience. “Without rehearsed material, having to know tons and tons of songs, just using my ears, that’s when I really got my ass kicked!”

After the pandemic hit, like a surprising number of other talented individuals (a blessing in disguise it turns out), he returned to Greensboro. “I love being back here,” Fribush says. “It’s a great home base of operation. I moved to College Hill and joined the band Hiss Golden Messenger from Durham.” Relocating proved fortuitous. “I also met Charlie Hunter, who randomly moved to Greensboro when I did. We happened to be into the same type of music and started playing together.”

When Fribush and I spoke that afternoon, he had just returned from laying down tracks for his next album in Richmond. “I’m on a little bit of marathon recording new stuff right now,” he explains. “I’ve been really going down a deep rabbit hole of writing. It’s been rewarding, having all these demos.” In the Richmond recording studio, he connected with some of the guys from Butcher Brown, a jazz quintet from the area. “We were just pulling songs off my demo list. It was really fun to have these original sparks, and then see what they turn into.” The week following our convo, he was jetting off to Denver to record with producer and drummer Adam Deitch from the funktastic ensemble Lettuce.

Currently, Fribush is especially looking forward to jamming once again with his People Please collaborators at the N.C. Folk Festival. When he was first approached about performing, he says, “I was like, well, I would really like to get those guys in on it, too.” The only other live performance this trio has played as a unit was an album release party at Flat Iron, but, he notes, “Whenever the three of us get together, it’s always awesome.”

Taking a break from touring with TMF (The Music Forever), formerly of Maze featuring Frankie Beverly Winston-Salem resident Calvin Napper is renowned for beating out percussive blasts for gospel greats Kirk Franklin, Shirley Caesar, and CeCe Winans, to name a few. He was awarded a Grammy for his contribution to Donnie McClurkin’s Psalms, Hymns & Spiritual Songs. “Calvin Napper is a natural born drummer,” Smooth Jazz Daily opines. “Although addicted to gospel music, he pursues his musical destination in smooth jazz or, more precisely, funk.”

Cruising into Latin and Caribbean inspired grooves on recordings with D’Angelo, Frank Ocean, Mos Def, and John Mayer, world-renowned Jazz and R&B guitarist-bassist Charlie Hunter’s signature Novax seven- and eight-string instruments allow him to play both bass and guitar simultaneously. “I’ve been a fan of Charlie Hunter for a really long time,” John Mayer once said about after having the chance to record “In Repair” with him. “One of the values that he’s kind of instilled in me, just from my being a fan of his, is his willingness to want to get into other musical situations than what he’s familiar with.”

On The Charlie Hunter Quartet’s highly-acclaimed 2001 Blue Note album Songs of the Analog Playground, it was Hunter’s transcendent interpretations of Roxy Music’s “More Than This” and Nick Drake’s hauntingly sensual “Day Is Done,” both featuring then unknown vocalist, Norah Jones, that introduced the future nine-time Grammy winning singer-songwriter to the world. A year later, Jones’ debut album became one of the best-selling platters of all time. Intertwined on People Please, these three virtuosos have created an extraordinary sonic playground reminiscent of those ubiquitous, highly infectious instrumentals of old. Think “Soul Bossa Nova” (the theme from Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery) by Quincy Jones; Oscar Peterson’s jaunty, unparalleled ivory-tinkling wizardry across musical genres; Memphis ’60s Southern grooves typified by “Green Onions” from Booker T. & the MG’s; in addition to that sweet Philly soul sound of the ’70s. “Philly is where most of the Hammond players were from,” Fribush notes about the keyboard that funked up the 1970s before soulless synthesizers desensitized our ears. “Jimmy Smith, Shirley Scott, yeah, that’s the sound. Those are my idols.”

People Please may be Sam Fribush’s first assemblage of all original material, but even the cover tunes on his two previous records are, for the most part, practically undetectable as such, owing to his singularly preternatural approach. “That was the point,” Fribush says. “Finding deep cuts then arranging them in interesting ways.”

This musical artist has somehow managed to make that instantly recognizable Hammond B-3 Tonewheel’s harmonic resonance fresh again. One reason that sound is relatively uncommon today? The manufacturer stopped making them a half-century ago. “Most of my Hammonds are from late-’50s, early-’60s,” which means that, out of necessity, Fribush has to repair and refurbish those organs and antiquated amps himself. “They are 100 percent analog, no chipboard. It’s all tubes, pretty straightforward. In the jazz and funk organ idiom, it’s a hard sound to replicate because of the warmth of the Hammond.”

Are the Sam Fribush Organ Trio’s electronic earworms burrowing us back to a post-synth future, 21st-century beachmusic style? They may be the closest thing to a so-called “supergroup” the Folk Fest proffers this year.

Fun Fact: in order for a band that he once managed to get paid, Billy Ingram was forced to confront Eddie Nash, one of LA’s most notorious mass murderers (Wonderland), who was crying poor behind a wall of at least $200,000 in bundled bills. Best believe band got paid!

2024 Department Wandering Billy

Birdwatch

BIRDWATCH

Southbound and Down

Grasspipers forage on farms and fields

By Susan Campbell

As the long days of summer wane here in the Piedmont and Sandhills of North Carolina, we have scores of birds preparing for that long southbound journey we refer to as fall migration. Thousands of birds pass by, both day and night, headed for wintering grounds deep in the Southern Hemisphere. Flocks of medium-bodied shorebirds, dropping down to replenish their reserves, are one seemingly unlikely sight. They may stay a few hours or a few days, depending on the weather and the abundance of food available to them. At first glance, you might think these long-legged birds are lost — far from the coast where a variety of sandpipers are commonplace. But once you take a good look, you will realize these are birds of grassland habitat, not sand flats.

Referred to as “grasspipers” by birders, these species forage on a wide variety of invertebrates found in grassy expanses. They breed in open northern terrain, in some cases all the way up into the Arctic. They are moving through as they migrate to grassland habitat in southern South America. Although some may be seen along our coastline, they are more likely to be found in flocks or loose groups at inland airports, sod farms, playing fields and perhaps even tilled croplands.

Come late August and early September, armed with binoculars or, better yet, a powerful spotting telescope, you can find these cryptically colored birds without having to travel too far from home. They are indeed easy to miss unless you know where to look at the right time. Flocks often include a mix of species, so be ready to sort through each and every bird, lest you overlook one of the rarer individuals. When it comes to shorebirds as a group, many of the dozens of species are tricky to identify so, if you’re relatively new to birding, I suggest you arrange to join a more accomplished birder to start.

The most common and numerous species without a doubt is the killdeer. Its dark upper parts contrast with white underparts, but it’s the double neck ring that gives it away. This spunky bird, whose name is its call, nests (if you can call a rudimentary scrape in the gravel a nest) on disturbed ground such as unpaved roadways and parking lots throughout North Carolina. Flocks of hundreds of birds are not uncommon. Frequently other species are mixed in as well. In the Sandhills, the sod farm in Candor hosts large numbers of killdeer around Labor Day. Check them all and you will likely be rewarded with something different mixed in.

The plover family, to which the killdeer belongs, consists of squat, short-necked and billed birds of several species. The semipalmated plover is a close cousin. This slightly smaller species sports only a single neck ring and curiously, individuals have slightly webbed (or palmate) feet. They can actually swim short distances when in wetter habitat and are thus more versatile foragers.

The most curious are the obligate grassland shorebirds, which include the well-camouflaged buff-breasted sandpiper and the upland sandpiper. Both nest in the drier prairies of Canada and spend the winter months mainly in the pampas of Argentina. “Buffies” are a buff-brown all over and have delicate-looking heads, short, thin bills and a distinctive ring around the eye. “Uppies” are brownish and have small heads as well, but with larger eyes and both a longer bill and longer legs. These two species are thought to be declining — most likely due to habitat loss on both continents. If you miss the chance to get out in search of inland shorebirds this fall, don’t fret. They will move through again come spring, although in smaller numbers. Winter will take its toll, but those who do make it back our way will be in vibrant plumage as they wing their way northward to create yet a new generation of grasspipers north of the border.

2024 Birdwatch Department

Chaos Theory

CHAOS THEORY

A Trance Encounter...

With a self-proclaimed Tori Amos “stalkeress”

By Cassie Bustamante

When one of my favorite musical acts from my teen years announced a nearby tour stop last year, I quickly snagged two tickets. Tori Amos, piano virtuoso and singer-songwriter known for her powerful, thought-provoking ballads, released her solo debut album, Little Earthquakes, in 1992. It served as the soundtrack to my high school career, which began the very same year. Track two, “Girl,” expressed how I felt as I grappled with who I wanted to be: She’s been everybody else’s girl, maybe one day she’ll be her own.

The last time I saw Amos perform live was during her 1996 tour, when my friends and I caught her — and “a lite sneeze” (IYKYN) — at Springfield Symphony Hall in Massachusetts. Now, almost 30 years later, I step into Charlotte’s Ovens Auditorium — a fitting name on a sweltering June day — for Amos’ 2023 Oceans to Oceans Tour.

Dressed like something straight out of My So Called Life, my concert cohort, Chandra, wears a babydoll frock with Doc Martens, while I’ve donned a long bohemian dress with Birks. Chandra, who accompanied me to Nashville for the Eras Tour, peers at the concert-goers around us. “Much different crowd from our Taylor Swift experience, huh?”

She’s right. The fans are “mature” — and I suddenly feel well aware of my own age — and there’s a lot less pastel and glitter, more goth and grunge.

After finding our seats, three men around our age sit to the left of Chandra. One, wearing a pride bracelet, explains that he’s been a fan for years. “Little Earthquakes helped me find the strength to get out of an abusive relationship when I was in my 20s,” he says.

Looking around the auditorium, I wonder how many of us have been pulled through crises by Amos’ lyrics.

To my right, two seats remain unoccupied through the opening act’s set. But after the band exits the stage, two women plop down, visibly tipsy.

The taller of the two, a natural redhead like Amos, turns to us, bright blue eyes glistening with excitement — or maybe it’s booze — and shouts, “I can’t believe we’re here! I love Tori!”

She asks our names and we return the question. “Funny you should ask because I know my name and it’s not the one my mom gave me. She named me Jennifer, middle name Kelly — Jennifer Kelly! I mean, how ’80s can you get?” She leans in a little too closely to me. “This is the face of a Laura, isn’t it? I know I am a Laura.”

We nod politely, turning back to our own conversation, but Jennifer Kelly is not having it. “I am such a fan. Actually, I am a stalkeress.” My eyes widen in horror — not even at the stalking, but at the proud shameless admission. Oblivious, Jennifer Kelly continues, “Yeah, I found her house in Ireland and roamed around her property. I didn’t see her, but I was there!”

We try to disengage, but Jennifer Kelly is at this concert to be heard.

“I am going to warn you right now, I know all of the words and I plan to sing along loudly. And I trance dance.”

Trance dance?

Finally, the lights go down and Amos takes the stage. For such a vocal powerhouse, she’s much more petite at 59 than I remember.

Without so much as a word, she sits down at her piano and plays a long prelude, soon recognizable as “A Sorta Fairytale,” a fan favorite.

While I fully expect Jennifer Kelly to sing loudly, I don’t anticipate what happens next. She talks to her friend. Nonstop. Throughout the entire song — and the next few.

But, as Amos begins tapping the piano keys for her fifth song, Jennifer Kelly suddenly slumps her head, swaying it from side to side. Her hand grabs her friend’s knee.

Seconds later, her mouth is running again.

“Um, you can’t be in a trance one moment and then talking the next,” Chandra mutters in my ear. Trance dancing — which I google from my seat — by definition, is a spiritual experience that requires one to escape from themselves for a moment and move in a state of half-consciousness. Got that, Jennifer Kelly?

It’s clearly an act, one that goes on through the remainder of the concert. We do our best to focus on who we came here for, but it seems we’ve inadvertently bought tickets to the Jennifer Kelly show.

Just before the encore performance, Jennifer Kelly and her pal exit. I breathe a sigh of relief as Amos begins singing “Cornflake Girl.” In a crowd of hundreds, it feels like Chandra and I have the last two songs all to ourselves.

Exiting the auditorium, I laugh and say, “We have a lot to talk about in the Uber ride back!”

And then we see them, standing outside.

“Keep walking,” I whisper as I accidentally make eye contact with Jennifer Kelly.

“Girls!” she shrieks as if we’re old friends. “Sooooo . . . what did you think of the show?”

“Tori was fabulous,” I say as I hustle past. Then, under my breath, “What we could hear of her anyhow.”

We pile into our Uber, Jennifer Kelly a red-headed glimmer in the rearview mirror.

While Chandra and I recap the absurdity of our Tori Amos concert experience, I can’t help but feel grateful that her music comforted me while I figured out who I was. Some people, it seems, are still searching for that identity. And it isn’t Jennifer Kelly. But it might be Laura.

2024 Chaos Theory Department

Life’s Funny

LIFE'S FUNNY

Could Be a Myssssstery

But the math sayssss no

By Maria Johnson

By the time I saw the black snake, it was smack in the middle of my lane, a few yards ahead of me.

It was too late to steer around it.

Best case scenario, I figured, my car would pass squarely over the undulating 4-foot ribbon that was booking it across the searing blacktop in the middle of the day.

I squinted and raised my shoulders to brace for ka-thunk, ka-thunk under my tires.

A nanosecond passed. Nothing.

Not even one ka-thunk.

I glanced in my rearview mirror.

No squashed “S” in my wake, which was good.

But neither did I see the snake finishing its sprint to the other side of the road.

Huh?

I pulled into a side street, turned around and retraced my path.

No snake on the road.

No snake beside the road.

What the . . . ?

I turned around once more to survey the scene of the non-crime.

Then a horrifying possibility occurred to me:

What if the snake had somehow glommed onto the underside of my car and was now tucked into the recesses of my engine?

Why, just the week before, a friend had told the story of a friend of hers, who lived in the country and had been driving down the road when a snake slithered out of an air-conditioning vent on her dashboard.

Alone in the car now, I issued a string of words not suited for a family-friendly magazine.

I slapped shut every air vent I could reach.

The innocent creature I’d hoped to spare suddenly represented a cardiac threat.

Then I remembered another story, this one from my childhood. One morning, my mom was driving my brother to Vacation Bible School. On the way to and fro’, we heard meowing. Back at home, Puff, our cat, appeared from under the car. He was streaked with grease like a mechanic. We thought it was funny.

Looking back, I’m sure that Puff was never quite the same after his VBS experience, but we had no time for trauma in the 1960s.

The point is, I knew that animals could shelter under the hood of a car, never mind that the critters in both of my cautionary tales had probably stowed away while the car was parked.

Maybe, I thought, one of my tires could have grabbed the black snake and flung it upward — minus the ka-thunk — into the guts of my car.

Long shot? Perhaps. But it was too late, the air vent story had left the station.

Minutes later, I pulled up in front of my house, parked several feet from the curb and literally jumped out of the car.

I’d just been to a baby shower, so I was wearing a sun-dress, not my usual T-shirt and shorts.

Also, it was hot as Hades, and I was circling my car while stooped over, peering underneath from a safe distance.

The unusual scene did not go unnoticed.

Our neighbor Jonathan came out of his front door looking concerned.

“Are you OK?” he asked.

I explained what had happened.

“Pop the hood,” Jonathan said.

He lifted the lid of my Honda and . . .

JESUS, MARY AND JOSEPH!! A WHOLE NEST OF BLACK SNAKES RIGHT BEHIND THE AIR FILTER!!!

Oh. Wait. Just some hoses.

“I don’t see anything,” Jonathan said, studying the engine from different angles.

I was soothed. Somewhat.

I went inside and recounted the experience to my husband, who thought for a minute and finally said, “I don’t know. Snakes can move pretty fast.”

“Yeah, 35 miles an hour when they’re inside my car!”

“We could look under the rest of a car with a mirror and a flashlight,” he offered.

“Too close,” I shot back.

“We could take it to a garage, and they could put it on a lift,” he said. “Do you need an oil change?”

Brilliant!

We drove to our favorite quick-change garage.

“I’m gonna let you explain this,” Jeff said.

I opened the door as a uniformed guy named Jordan approached the car.

“Got time for an oil change?” I asked.

“Sure,” he said. “Can we do anything else for you?”

“Funny you should ask,” I said.

I summarized the situation: snake, no snake, air vent, eek.

Jordan smiled and nodded at my request for an oil change plus.

“You don’t seem put off by this,” I said.

He smiled and shook his head no. I had a suspicion about the source of his nonchalance.

“Are you a country boy?” I asked.

“A little bit,” he said, flashing a grin and the tattoo inside his left forearm: the image of a shotgun and the words “YEE YEE,” a hunter’s exclamation.

“Where did you grow up?” I asked.

“In West Virginia, on a farm,” he said.

Then Jordan showed me the ink on his right arm: At his wrist, a jumping bass with the words “Fish On;” on the underside of his forearm, “Family and Friends.”

Right person. Right place. Right time.

Thirty minutes later, Jordan reported the outcome of the procedure. Fresh oil.

No snake.

I exhaled. We drove home and parked in the garage, though I’d be lying if I said I didn’t look over my shoulder as we walked away from the car.

Later that night, I noodled on the mystery.

I reached for my phone and searched, “How fast can a black snake move?”

Answer: A black racer can hit 8–10 miles an hour.

Next search: How wide is a two-lane road?

Answer: 24 feet.

A quick conversion told me that 8–10 miles an hour translated to about 12 feet a second.

In other words, it would take a black racer two seconds to cross a road. Or one second to cross half a road.

Now, split that second, and give half to the moment between the point I couldn’t see over my hood and the point my front tires crossed the snake’s path.

Give the other half to the time it would take for me to clear that spot and see anything in my rear view mirror.

Conclusion #1: The snake made it across the road.

Conclusion #2: I made sense of the mystery.

Conclusion #3: My husband was right.

Conclusion #4: If you need an oil change or a snake check, go see Jordan at Express Oil Change by the Lowe’s hardware store on Battleground Avenue.

Yee yee.

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