The day after the show in North Carolina we found a bag hanging on my parents’ gate.  This is the type of peculiar, wonderful thing that makes life there so attractive.  It turns out my parents’ friend Pat decided to stop by and leave us a present.  It contained walnuts, molassas, some music she thought I’d like (I did), honey moonshine and cherry moonshine.  

I’m not much of a drinker, but sweet fancy Moses, that moonshine was a smack in the face!

My parents booked a show for Aric and I in the town of Marshall, North Carolina the day after Thanksgiving.  I was a bit nervous for two reasons: a) half of the audience would be made up of my family and b) the other half would be made up of people from the town.  It turns out I didn’t have anything to worry about in either regard.  Both my family and the Marshallians were as wonderful an audience as you could ask for.

After the first set, my cousins Marty, Ben and Josh all sang some songs as well.  Josh lived in Nepal for many years starting and running an education center.  While he was there, he recorded some songs and became something of a pop sensation.  In North Carolina, Josh sang a Nepali drinking song.  It went over great, but afterwards he confessed that he forgot some of the words at the end and just made stuff up.  No one noticed.

Want to see one of Josh’s Nepali videos?

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My parents have semi-retired to North Carolina.  At first they started going there on vacation; then they bought some land; then they built a cabin; now they’re there a lot.  

Our whole extended family was there for Thanksgiving this year.  On Thursday morning, anticipating overeating, I went jogging in the hills around the cabin.  

I learned that running in the mountains of North Carolina is much more tiring than running in Chicago.  I also learned that it’s kind of scary when you’re running and you encounter a herd of cows.  Those mofos are huge.  I also learned that when you run through said herd, you are very likely to step in a large pile of their leavings.

That was the only morning I went running in North Carolina.