Da Big Sign Caper

In August of 2003 Smoky Mountain Woodworks and Landrum Machine & Cutlery (i.e.: Marie and I and our friends Len & Varena) started Treasures of Appalachia, Inc.. The purpose of this was to help local artists find buyers for their work. Naturally “local artists” included us. The problem is that most of the many, many artists who live and work in this county live and work in places that are tucked away up in the mountains, far from the major thoroughfares; difficult to get to even if you know where you are going. And if you are a visitor to our county, pretty near impossible to find.

So we wanted to open a gallery where locals couple display their work and travelers could find it easily. This effort has had a varied amount of success. Overall, we think we’ve been blessed considering the extremely limited amount of resources we have to work with.

In August of this year (2007) we moved the gallery in which over 50 local artists were displaying their work to a larger and in many ways superior location. One of the tasks that needed accomplishing was to move the big road-side sign and put it up at the new location. We had to leave the framework because it was cemented into the ground, but we took the sign boards to be re-erected at the new gallery. We did that last Tuesday.

To build this sign, Len and I cut all the parts and assembled them on the ground to make sure everything will fit, then disassembled it, carted the pieces up a pair of extension ladders and reassembled them aloft.

Don’t let that fool you though, the components were plenty heavy and it was enough of a strain doing it this way. There was no possible way we could have gotten it up there fully assembled without a crane. Most of the frame is made from pressure treated 2x12s with a 2x6 for the top rail. If you’ve never worked with pressure treated lumber fresh from the lumber yard, let me tell you; it’s quite wet and much heavier than dry lumber the same size. The side pieces are actually 8 feet long, but extend down between the sign boards of the lower sign 4’ to help stabilize the sign so the wind won’t topple it over. Lag bolts will hold only so much, you know. The lower sign is 8’ x16’, our sign is 4’ x 12’ and the point where the two join is 13’ up in the air.

During this reassembly I was using a drill as a power screwdriver. Once, while holding the driver with my left hand and hanging on with my right hand because the direction of the screw and position of the ladder demanded that I work left handed, I was having to apply considerable pressure to keep the driver bit seated in the head of the 3” long screw. The driver bit slipped off the screw and augured into my right hand. The result was a rather deep puncture wound in the fleshy muscle bit between the index finger and thumb of my right hand. It bled like a stuck pig and looked awful as blood ran down my arm. Stung a bit too. Luckily it started to rain and that washed some of the blood away.

The wound is healing nicely now, no signs of infection or permanent disability. It’s tender though.

Last night I was sitting at the computer, engrossed in editing an instructions file for Treasures shopkeepers, when the puncture gave me a sharp, stinging pain. Surprised by the sudden pain I glanced over at the hand. The wound is scabbed over, with a dark spot in the middle and little “puckers” running out from the middle. Well, to my distracted mind it looked for all the world like a spider.

My distracted Brain said, “Ahhh, there is a spider on Right Hand and it’s biting us!” So the parts of my body sprang immediately into action and Left Hand reached over and smacked Right Hand to kill the “spider” and thus rescue his counterpart from further injury.

This was followed by an instant of mental chaos followed by several nano-seconds of creeping clarity as nerve impulses arrived from Right Hand to Brain: GASP --- “AHHHHHHHHHHHH… that HURT!” Left Hand immediately apologized to Right Hand and Brain crawled off to his corner and hid.

I don’t think We’ll be making THAT mistake again for a while!

If you ever find yourself near Cosby TN (which is quite close to Gatlinburg TN, a very popular vacation destination) stop in and say "hey". Maybe even take home some authentic, locally made, hand crafted artwork for your home.

News Bees, Fog Dogs & Insect Serenades

Last night the girls got on one of their barking binges. Several times they’d spring up and run around the house barking out the windows. I’d get up and stare them down until they, with heads hanging and tails tucked would return to their beds. After the second round, I flipped on the outside flood lights -- um… like I’d have flood lights inside – to see if I could see what was riling them and was surprised to have the light swallowed up by a dense blanket of grey fog.

Going back to the bedroom, I mentioned the fog to Marie and she was surprised because just a few minutes before all this began she had noted how bright and clear the moon was as she looked out the bedroom window.

After 3 or 4 rounds in twenty minutes or so, the fog went away as suddenly as it had come (must have been a Mountain Wraith) and the girls settled in to sleep the rest of the night. Lucky them.

By now I was fully awake and am NOT blessed with the ability to just lay down and go instantly to sleep at any time any time I choose like everyone else in my household. By the time I got to sleep, it was nearly time to get up. And I’ve been foggy-headed all day. Curse those mountain wraiths!

For the past two days I’ve spent a fair amount of time in my finishing room as I’m working on staining the big curio cabinet I’ve been working on. Each time I go in there, a few minutes after I get started, I hear a familiar droning buzz…the drone of a News Bee. Now, in case they call these critters by some other name where you are, these are insects that look like small hornets; yellow and black stripes, but the size of a wasp and his abdomen is kind of squared off and gnarly instead of being a stinger tipped cone like a wasp or hornet. They have the peculiar habit of just hanging motionless in the air watching people as they do things.

This one would come and hang about a half inch outside of my finishing room window screen each time I went in and would stay there for the longest time. Normally a couple of minutes of watching is enough then they are off to report to their Editor in Chief. But this guy would stay for a good 10 minutes, barely moving, just watching. I could swear he had a note pad! It got to where I would talk to him and explain what I was doing. I named him Ray, after a local reporter I know.

We have some other strange bugs. Actually, living in the woods as we do, we have a lot of strange and wonderful bugs. Some I’ve never seen before, like the News Bee. Others are more common but they do strange things.

At night we are serenaded by an insect; locusts (grasshoppers) I think, that make a three part thrumming buzz; chic-ka-chaw. But what is unusual is that they do it in unison. It’s hard to say how many of them there are in the trees around us, but it sounds like millions and they’ll get into a rhythm and perfect unison with their song for 10 to 15 seconds. Then a few loose the beat and anarchy spreads for a second, then they rally and get back into rhythm. And they do it over and over and over, all night long. It’s really quite entertaining to listen to while I’m laying in bed not sleeping. I don’t have to strain to hear them, they are quite loud.

Perhaps locusts (or whatever) do this everywhere, I’m not sure about that all I know is that I’ve never noticed it before. But another local resident has been commemorated as being very unusual and bug fans from all around the nation come to see it.

There is one place near Cades Cove in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park where for a few weeks each year tens of thousands of fireflies gather and flash complex patterns in perfect unison. It’s really quite intriguing and no one knows how or why they do it. And apparently this particular phenomenon occurs no where else in our country.

Just one more perk from living here in The Great Smoky Mountains.

That’s about it this time.