In Defense of Boone

July 6

Note: This is going to be a purely reactionary journal entry, in response to fellow Clarionite John Sullivan’s entry of July 3rd, or at least those portions of it pertaining to his unpleasant stay in Boone. I suggest you read his journal before continuing with mine... it starts on the fifth paragraph or so, here.

Done? Okay:

Oh, John. I’m sorry you had such an unpleasant time! All the things you said were true, if I’d experienced the things you did I’d have a low opinion of this little mountain town too... but, I have to say, Boone shouldn’t be avoided entirely. Let me elaborate...

I’ve lived here for the past five years-- I’d say Boone is my adopted home town. I love it, not unreservedly, but in full view of its faults. The portions of Boone that John described (and which may have been the only portions he was exposed to) are in the newer downtown area, the strip-mallish, franchise-infested, anonymous-American part of town. That section of town is, not coincidentally, clustered around the town’s bit of four-lane highway... With the occasional exception, that part of town offers little to the discerning human organism. There’s the Book Warehouse, which occasionally has some really lovely writing/writer-related events, and Hunan, a damnveryfine Chinese restaurant (not a cold-chicken-wing-snotlike-egg-drop-soup-buffet kind of place, but a real sit-down order off the menu eat yummy stuff establishment)... otherwise, that part of town has only such things as Long John Silver’s (need I expand upon the horrors of drive-thru fish?), a New & Shiny Ruby Tuesday’s, our Wal-Mart (sigh), and other symptoms of the Homogenous Nightmare. As for Makoto’s... well, I’ve had some pleasant meals there, but remind me to tell you about the time the cook stabbed the waiter... In my experience most Japanese Steakhouses of that sort are dingy places, but I’ll concede John the dungeon point... Alas, those things are all part of Boone (though not parts I oft encounter). Unlike Blowing Rock, our self-consciously quaint neighbor to the south, Boone has no particular injunctions against Big Corporate Megaliths or their Ubiquitous Commerce-Oriented Tentacles. There’s sad stuff around.

But. But: If John and his ladylove had had the advantage of a Native Guide (or at least half-decade-resident-Guide), they might have discovered Diverse & Seemly Wonders in Boone.

Why, they might have begun the day with coffee at Espresso News, which is essentially a big room filled with light (with an independent bookstore upstairs), where they roast their own beans and make daily delicious pastries, such as the chocolate-and-cherry muffin I am currently noshing upon. They could have looked out the window and watched kids clamber up the four-sided climbing wall. A walk around downtown would have afforded them a view of Sal the Taoist Artist’s yard, which is full of the most astonishing and fascinating sculptures. Sal is nationally renowned and respected, with reason. They could have wandered in the good antique store, and, for a laugh, even visited the huge and bad antique store (which local Folk-Art expert and professional junker Howard Campbell calls "The Nightmare on King Street")-- there they would have found one-armed Luke Skywalker dolls and dented G.I. Joe lunchboxes. They could probably have caught some musicians busking outside Boone Drug, or seen our beloved Mime. They might have bought a story or poem from Joshua, the tipi-dwelling street vendor. Or been accosted by Willi, the bearded and nose-ringed primitive (I refer with that adjective to his artistic style, not his personality) artist. John and his ladylove could have popped into the Hayes McMillan art gallery and seen Hank Foreman’s new angel exhibit, as well as a retrospective of his old work; they could therein have also seen the fine paintings or Irmaly and the various media of local painter and sculptor Steve Ferguson (a former performance-art teacher of mine).

When such wanderings paled, as inevitably they would (downtown Boone simply isn’t so very big), they might have visited Trashcan Falls, the beautiful place with the dreadful name (which admittedly is a bit outside the limits of Boone proper), and gone swimming or rock-hopping. Or, going in another direction, they could have gone to Hebron Rock Colony (which alas, despite its evocative name, is not a colony founded by rocks fleeing igneous persecution), where the giants who once dwelled on the earth dropped all their boulder-sized marbles. There’s grottoes there, and still pools, and waterfalls, and a godawmighty wonderful big slope of river and rocks up which to clamber. Farther on, they might have visited the Reader’s Den used bookstore (in fact, they may well have passed both those places on their way to Grandfather Mountain) to pet the dogs, greet the genial shopkeepers, and browse for some books.

In the evening, after refreshing themselves from their explorations (hopefully at a place other than Mountain Villa Motor Lodge, which may be the third worse lodging establishment in town), they might have gone to see the Duke Ellington Orchestra play at Farthing Auditorium-- or, if I’m misremembering the night the Ellington Orchestra played, they could have attended some other event sponsored by An Appalachian Summer, the long festival we have every year (which has incidentally been stealing away my girlfriend each night; she works for the office of cultural affairs, so she’s been tending to the artists pretty much every night for the past week, and consequently being flirted with by trombone players and such). App Summer even gave me a gig, a couple years ago, doing a week-long sf writing workshop for teens... so you know it's a good program.

John and his ladylove could have capped off the night with... well, that’s sort of tough, actually-- Boone sort of rolls up the sidewalks later on, unless you want beer and pool... though there’s some coffee to be had, I suppose, if not at my beloved Espresso.

And there’s other wonders too numerous to, ah, enumerate, of course.

(I’m not saying Boone is a cultural hotbed... but for its size and locale, it doesn’t do too badly)

As for Boone’s "doughty rednecks"-- well, all right. The concealed weapons signs may not be completely unnecessary. But there’s also a lot of PhD.’s here, John, even some deserved ones, and many painters, potters, self-described hippies and gypsies, musicians, storytellers, wart-charmers, dowsers and wandering lovely strangers. Heck, the only people in this town I consistently don’t like are the Frat Boys, and even then there are a couple of exceptions... they come with the college territory, I suppose. Oh, and I’m not awfully fond of the summer-dwelling Floridiots (or Florons, which is another common epithet), who drive too slowly and make fun of our sweet tea and grits and livermush (well, all right, I give you the livermush) and misuse the word "y’all", which is for god’s sake not an ungrammatical word born of ignorance but a logical correction for our language’s incomprehensible lack of a proper plural second-person pronoun!

Anyway.

Ah, John. I hate that you got such a bad impression of this place... I hate that it’s not entirely undeserved, too. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to steer you clear of the dreadful bits and into the Better Avenues.

Well. I’ll be moving away in three or four weeks, so I don’t guess I’ll ever be able to show you the nice parts, more’s the pity.

Though this impassioned defense of the place has made me realize how much I’m going to miss Boone when I go...

(The city of Boone’s Board of Tourism and Rapacious Commerce did not provide me any compensation for the preceding praises, by the way)