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June 07, 2005

Not a lot to say, but plenty of pictures to make up for it

First things first: when we got back from Athens, my materials for the back-tack swap were in the mailbox.

My back-tack pal sent some great stuff: a very cool vintage fabric that I love, some black duppioni silk and another cute printed fabric to go with; some super-soft white and pink felt; cool old buttons and a pink zipper; and also some gorgeous beaded stitch markers that she said were a gift for me, but since there are ten of them I think I'll keep five and send five along to the next person, because I'm sure she'll love them too. Way to go, back-tack pal! This stuff is going to be fun to work with, and I have some things in my stash that are going to look great with it too.

So. You want to know more about our trip, don't you? The highlight, besides finding a cool roommate and meeting more people at the school and picking my courses and which class to do my teaching practicum in, was Cherokee, North Carolina. We drove there on Friday night after we were finished on campus and had plenty of time to bum around and check things out.

Cherokee is the tourist trap that time forgot. It's just as tacky as Pigeon Forge on the other side of the park, but everything here seems like it hasn't changed since the 1960s. It's full of gift shops where you can get the tackiest fake Indian stuff imaginable, plus anything else people would buy. I kept thinking how much my school chum Jessica would love this place; she was in my graduating class and all of her BFA thesis work dealt with being half native and half white, placing cheap made-in-China fake "Indian" artifacts next to traditional native Canadian artifacts that she had made from modern materials like pens, bullets, plastic bleach bottles and rubber. In fact I'll be interested to hear what Jessica has to say about Cherokee when I show her the pictures. In Pigeon Forge everything is shiny and mall-like; in Cherokee it's all log buildings, the kind of fake trading post places I remember visiting in Northern Ontario as a kid in the 70s.

The town does seem to be suffering somewhat economically, no doubt due to the huge boom that Pigeon Forge has experienced in the last 20 years, since Dollywood opened. We saw lots of places that were closed, boarded up or torn down.

Look, we found a weight-and-fortune machine that still took pennies:

My fortune: change quickly if you find you are headed up the wrong alley.

Where the goth kids stay:

Since we prefer to keep our lives drama-free, we stayed at the Pink instead.

The Pink was not all it was cracked up to be, but we've decided that we think it's being subtly marketed to gays, what with the pink exterior and pink sheets and pink bathrooms, and that fairy. And the fact that the old guy in the office had an earring. If it's all a coincidence don't tell me because it makes me happy to believe that there are gay-friendly places in the American South and that we've found one already.

We went for a walk in the Oconaluftee Islands Park, and found a huge bamboo forest there.

Rob? Is this a native Carolinean bamboo? We just assumed all bamboo was Chinese. But the guy in the next room at the Pink (Rick) told us that a friend of his used to own a bamboo nursery in Florida and that one of the varieties he grew was native to that part of Florida. If this is true then we might need some in our front yard; who cares if it grows taller than our 2.5 storey house?

The craziest thing about this bamboo is that the new shoots were coming up just as fat as the mature parts. That's what caught my attention because it looked like a bunch of small cut-off trees but they all came to a point on top, and then I noticed all the bamboo behind them.

Sadly, they were a little too big to dig up and smuggle home in the car for our garden.

What I just realized now while resizing these photos is that everyone's name on this trip was Sandy: Hockey Mom, the pony ride pictured yesterday, and this old dog, who seemed infinitely worn out from all of the bright and jangly arcade action.

I knew his name was Sandy because it was written in white-out on his collar, along with his phone number. I tried to get him to look at me, wheedling and cajoling and calling him by name, but he was too weary to even lift his head or meet my eye. So I snapped this picture, and he immediately got up and huffed off. Guess I should have asked first.

*Okay, I lied. I always have a lot to say, even when it's about nothing.

Posted by jodi at June 7, 2005 08:25 PM | categories:  jet set

Comments

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