South & Solz

An Angel in Tellico Plains:

I passed by a public library today, and spent some time there with the works of Lewis Grizzard. I suppose some of you don't know him, but he was a man from Georgia who used to write for the newspaper. Though he was important to me, and to many others of the South, he was a simple man who was of no consequence to most; but once he broke a lance on someone who was.

TELLICO PLAINS, TENN. -- I had been days without a newspaper, locked away in a careless world of mountains, rivers, dirt roads, and a supply of Vienna sausage and sardines and a gift for which we can never offer enough gratitude: the saltine cracker.

God bless the saltine cracker, for it is constantly loyal in its service to enhance the flavor of even the barest edible. You could eat dirt with a packet of saltine crackers on the side.

I can’t go many days without a newspaper because I can’t go many days without certain information necessary to my peace of mind.

I need to make sure the world hasn’t been blown away, and I need to keep up with the Dodgers. In this rustic village, which is located a the foot of some mountains near the Tennessee North Carolina border, I purchased a newspaper and found the world still in one piece, which is more than I could say for the Dodgers.

Interest in the Dodgers is a carryover from my youth, but must a man have to explain every quirk of his character? The Dodgers, I read, have sunk to a lowly third. And the Giants, whom I hate, are still holding to first place. So help me Junior Gilliam, my favorite all-time Dodger, that can’t last.

My companion and I needed a hot breakfast, if for no other reason than to take a brief leave from the joys of saltines. We walked into a place in Tellico Plains that was a combination beer joint and restaurant, mostly beer joint. The regulars were already at their stations. A card game of some variety was in progress, and an old man in a hat played the game with a boy-child on his knee.

"You have grits?" I asked the lady.

"No grits," she said. She was missing some teeth. "I could fix you potatoes."

Where does it say an angel must have teeth?

Over eggs and country ham and fried potatoes—the kind that are round and thin—I read the rest of the newspaper. Carter this. Carter that. All hail Proposition 13. And a bearded man had made a speech in the Harvard Yard and had said some nasty things about our country. He made the speech in his native tongue, Russian.

The man, who has never been to Tellico Plains, Tenn., said we ought to eat dirt awhile because we have become fat and too interested in material goods, like nice places to live and motorboats. He said we are suffering from a "moral poverty."

He said if he could change his country, which would put him in jail if he went back to it, he wouldn’t use our country as a model.

I finished my breakfast and the newspaper, left a nice tip for the lady and walked out on the streets of Tellico Plains.

It was a gorgeous late spring day. Just beyond the fruited plain that surrounds the village was a mountain majesty more green than purple, but stunning nevertheless.

Passing by me were simple folk, dedicated to the day’s work and the simple pleasures. Most of them, I am sure, had never heard of the Harvard Yard, much less of the bearded, exiled Russian author who spoke there.

A pickup truck passed through town, its rear bumper bearing a message I don’t entirely agree with, but one I needed at the moment. The Dodgers were going badly and what the Russian said upset me.

"America," read the sticker, "love it or leave it."

But where would you go, Mr. Solzhenitsyn? Where would you go?

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